
COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



LOVE 
ENTHRONED 





ESSAYS ON 

EVANGELICAL 

PERFECTION 



By DANIEL STEELE, D.D. 






H ayairij earl ovvdeGfiog ryg TeTieioTqrog. — St. Paul 
Amor complectitur virtutum universitatem* — Bengel 



TWELFTH THOUSAND 






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NEW YORK : EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI : JENNINGS & PYE 



THE LIBRARY OP 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

JUL 1 1903 

- Copyright Entry 

CLA§S A- XXo. No 

COPY B, 

— r r j i ii i n ii ma 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by 

NELSON & PHILLIPS, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



Copyright by 

Daniel Scsele 

1908 



< < < 



PREFACE. 



ANOTHER book on the higher Christian 
life ! Why should it be written ? For 
the same reason that I should preach another 
Gospel sermon. Why should you read it ? For 
the same reason that you should hear again 
" the old, old story of Jesus and his love." How 
strange it is that every one who receives full 
salvation gets hold of a pen as soon as he can, 
and blazons it abroad to all the world ! It is 
no more wonderful than the loosened tongue 
of the young convert. It argues the genuine- 
ness of the blessing found. The very fact that 
persons who hate hobbies become, when thus 
anointed of the Holy Ghost, men of one idea, 
and henceforth push this specialty with tongue 
and pen as if in the grasp of an all-absorbing 
passion, ought to demonstrate to doubters that 
there is here a great Gospel truth struggling 
to reveal itself to the Church. Reader, do not 
be afraid of the multiplication of books on ad- 



4 Preface. 

vanced Christian experience. The light grain 
will drift off into the chaff, while the full corn 
will drop into the bushel and feed the famish- 
ing. It takes many men to explore a conti- 
nent, many pens to portray the unsearchable 
riches of Christ. Believers could have been 
saved by one gospel — one photograph of the 
Nazarene. But God chose four evangelists to 
hold up to the Son of Man their mirrors, in 
order to reflect his bright image upon our 
dark world. Who shall be the limners of his 
great Successor, the blessed Comforter, but 
they in whom he abides, with whom he com- 
munes, and on whom he has wrought his 
transfiguration? The work of each of these 
spiritual artists may fix some wandering eye 
in a long and earnest gaze till transformed 
from glory to glory by the Spirit of God. 

The venerable Bishop Janes, whose zeal for 
Christ, and abundant labors, are almost apos- 
tolic, in commending to the Christian public a 
book on this high theme by one now associ- 
ated with him in the episcopal office, uses the 
following eloquent language : u Every man has 
his circle of influence. Each author on this 
subject will secure some readers that would 



Preface. 5 

not give attention to the writings of others. 
Here is a power for good that ought not to be 
Iost ; Verily, if there is any subject on which 
we need precept upon precept, and line upon 
line, the theme of this book is that subject. 
If there is any religious truth that should be 
urged upon the disciples of Jesus with the 
sweetness of his constraining love, and the 
solemnity of his Divine authority, it is the 
truth that Christians may and ought to be 
holy. O that tens of thousands of individuals, 
filled with its bliss, and inspired by its power, 
were telling of its charms, and inviting to its 
pursuit ! O that tens of thousands of spiritual 
limners, the Holy Ghost guiding their pencils, 
were actively and ceaselessly engaged in por- 
traying the glories of this subject to the vision 
of the Church until every member of it, rav- 
ished by its beauties, and impelled by its at- 
tractions, would aspire to its attainment, by 
faith enter into its enjoyment, and then join in 
labors to spread it ! " 

These considerations, together with the ur- 
gency of many friends — one of whom, from 
his office of bishop of the greatest of our 
American Churches, is enabled to give an ac- 



6 Preface. 

curate description of the wants of the Chris* 
tian public— have induced me to attempt a 
more permanent contribution to the litera- 
ture of this high theme than can be attained 
through the medium of religious periodicals. 

It is not the purpose of the author to be- 
wilder his readers with pages of speculation, 
however strong the temptation may be, but 
to keep as near as possible to the teachings of 
the Scriptures, to his own experience, and to 
the testimony of others on whom the Holy 
Spirit has poured his illumination. It is the 
design of the writer, in true Pauline style, " To 
testify unto you the Gospel of the grace of 
God." He may not often use the pronoun in 
the first person singular. But he wishes it to 
be understood that his arguments have been 
forged on the anvil of his own experience. 
St. Paul's argumentative epistles are his ex- 
perience expressed in logical form. 

It is with much sorrow of heart that the writ- 
er confesses one unenviable similarity to the 
apostle to the Gentiles, in the fact that he now 
preaches that part of the Gospel which he 
once destroyed. Before his eyes were anoint- 
ed he saw not, in the provisions of the atone- 



Preface. *j 

ment, the blessing of the fullness of Christ as 
a sharply defined transition in Christian ex- 
perience — an instantaneous work of the Spirit 
by faith only, as taught by Wesley. Embrac- 
ing the plausible theory of a gradual unfolding 
of the spiritual life without any sudden uplift 
by the power of the Spirit, he criticised, with- 
out the charity that is kind, the professors 
of this grace, magnifying their imperfections, 
stigmatizing them as fanatics and "pluper- 
fects," and judging them all by an occasional 
glaring hypocrisy or by the extravagances of 
some unbalanced mind. Thus he ran into the 
shallow fallacy of those sinners who feast on 
the failings of the saints — ex uno disce omnes — 
who from one learn the character of all. 

In unfolding his thoughts on this subject, 
the author has deemed it best to simply 
sketch the scheme of soteriology, or doctrine 
of salvation by Jesus Christ, and to elaborate 
only that which relates to the privileges of 
advanced believers. This will account for the 
apparent lack of symmetry in the treatment 
of the whole question of human salvation. Al- 
though the author has addressed special classes 
of his readers in the concluding chapters, he 



8 Preface. 

* 

has not restrained himself from occasional 
exhortation in the process of his argument. 
Whenever the temperature rose to a white 
heat, he has thought it wise " to strike while 
the iron was hot." It may not forestall criti- 
cism to confess, in advance, to this violation of 
the strict rules of logical development. The 
purpose of the writer has not been so much 
to create for himself a high reputation as a 
dialectician, as to lead willing souls unto " the 
blessing of the fullness of Christ" by the 
shortest path. It is our devout prayer that 
these utterances of a soul filled with "joy 
unspeakable," and sometimes almost " intoler- 
able,"* may contribute to the fulfilling of the 
Pauline petition, " That ye may be filled with 
all the fullness of God." 

Dr. Payson thus beautifully illustrates the 
relation of various classes of Christians to 
Christ. He conceives them as ranged in con- 
centric circles around the radiant form of our 
Immanuel: "Some value the presence of their 
Saviour so highly that they cannot bear to be 
at any remove from him. Even their work 
they will bring up, and do it in the light of 

* " The Still Hour."— Prof, Phelps, 



Preface. 9 

his countenance, and while engaged in it will 
be seen constantly raising their eyes to him, 
as if fearful of losing one beam of his light. 
Others, who, to be sure, would not be content 
to live out of his presence, are yet less wholly 
absorbed by it than these, and may be seen a 
little further off, engaged here and there in 
their various callings, their eyes generally 
upon their work, but often looking up to the 
light which they love. A third class, beyond 
these, but yet within the life-giving rays, in- 
cludes a doubtful multitude, many of whom 
are so much engaged in their worldly schemes 
that they may be seen standing sidewise to 
Christ, looking mostly the other way, and 
only now and then turning their faces toward 
the light." 

To induce those who are in the second and 
third circles to yield to the drawings of the 
Son of God, and gladly enter into the inner 
circle, and ever abide in the joyful presence 
of the crucified Lamb of God, is the motive 
of the writer, who, amid his pastoral and pul- 
pit labors, and the more exhausting studies in 
preparing a commentary on a portion of the 
Pentateuch, has found refreshment in setting 



io Preface 

up along the path of his own experience a 
few guide-boards for the benefit of those who 
may wish to walk in the same path. The 
writer cannot dismiss his book without invok- 
ing upon his readers the Pauline blessing, as 
translated by Bishop Ellicott, " Abstain from 
every form of evil. But may the God of peace 
himself sanctify you wholly ; and may your 
spirit, and soul, and body, be preserved en- 
tire, without blame, in the coming of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, 
who also will do it." 



DEFINITIONS. 



Much controversy on the subject of Chris- 
tian Perfection has arisen from the use of 
terms having various meanings. It is our 
purpose to notify the reader whenever we pass 
from one signification of a term to another. 

I. Holy, i) Set apart to the service of God. Applied 
to persons and things. 

2) Morally pure, free from all stain of sin. Persons. 

3) In the New Testament the original Greek word 
is used technically to designate all justified believ- 
ers, and is translated by the word " saints " or holy 
ones. 



Preface. ii 

2. Holiness. The state of. i) Consecration to God. 

2) Moral purity. 

3. Sanctify, i) To hallow, to consecrate to religious 

uses. u I sanctify myself." — Jesus. 

2) To make pure, to cleanse from moral defilement. 
"The very God of peace sanctify you wholly." — 
St. Paul. 

3) Sanctified — In the New Testament used techni- 
cially to designate the justified. 

4. Sanctification. Holiness : the act of making holy. 

5. The Moral Law. i) Unwritten ; the sense of moral 

obligation felt within. 
2) Written ; the Decalogue, with its (1) Prohibitions ; 
(2) Precepts. Also the two tables, prescribing 
(1) Duties to God ; (2) Duties to man. 

6. SlN. i) Actual. A willful transgression of the known 

law of God. Sin of commission, disobedience to 
a prohibition. Sin of omission, neglect of a pre- 
cept. " Sin is the transgression of the law." — St. 
John. 
Sin, (2) Original or inbred — often without any ad- 
jective, and always in the singular number — a 
state, not an act. Native corruption of the 
moral nature derived from Adam's apostasy. A 
lack of conformity to the moral law. Under the 
remedial dispensation it involves no guilt till ap- 
proved by the free agent and its remedy is re- 
jected. It is intensified by acts of sin of which it 
is the source. "All unrighteousness is sin."— St 
John. 



12 Preface. 

7. Perfection. As applied to man. 1) Legal or Adam* 
ic. Entire conformity to the moral law* " I have 
seen an end of all perfection, (for) thy law is ex- 
ceeding broad." — David. 

2) Celestial. The complete restoration of both soul 
and body in the glorified state after the resurrec- 
tion. " Not as though I had already attained, 
either were already perfect." — St. Paul. 

3) Ideal or Absolute. The combination of all con- 
ceivable excellences in the highest degree. As- 
cribed only to God, and not to beings capable of 
endless progress. " I am perfect." — God. " If I 
say I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse." 
-Job. 

4) Evangelical or Christian, The loving God 
with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and 
our neighbor as ourselves, with the complete ex- 
clusion of every feeling contrary to pure love. 
" Love is the fulfilling of the law." — St. Paul. 
" The bond of perfectness ;" the sum total of the 
virtues. — St. Paul translated by Bengel. " There 
is a twofold perfection, the perfection of the 
work, and that of the workman." — -Bishop Hop- 
kins. The former is legal, the latter is evangeli- 
cal perfection, which is nothing but inward sin- 
cerity, and uprightness of heart toward God ; 
although there may be many irr perfections and 
defects intermingled. 



CONTENTS. 



■♦• 



OttAPTM PABB 

I. Love Revealed - 15 

II. Love Militant . 22 

III. Love Triumphant over Original Sin.. 37 

IV. Full Salvation Immediately Attainable. . . 55 
V. Bible Texts for Sin Examined 71 

VI. Deliverance Deferred 80 

VII. Metaphorical Representations of Perfect 

Love . 91 

§ 1. The Dove Descending and Abiding 91 

§ 2. The Anointing 106 

§ 3. The Abiding Comforter 112 

VIII. The Higher Life Prater 123 

IX. The Three Dispensations 141 

X. Perfect Love as a Definite Blessing 160 

XL The Fruits of Perfect Love 167 

§ 1. The Joy of the Abiding Comforter 167 

§ 2. The Tongue Unloosed 179 

§ 3. The Uplifted Vail 185 

XII. Salvation from Artificial Appetites 194 

XIII. The Full Assurance of Faith 207 

§ I. Salvation from Doubt 207 

§ 2. The Psychology of Christian Assurance. . . 214 
§ 3. The Spiritual ^Manifestation of Christ not 

Illusory but Real 226 



14 Contents. 

Chapter Pagi 

XIV. The Evidences of Perfect Love 250 

XV. Testimony 268 

XVI. Spiritual Dynamics 303 

XVII. Stumbling-blocks in the King's Highway . 316 

XVIII. Growth in Grace 330 

XIX. Objections Answered 338 

XX. An Address to the Young Convert — the 

Higher Path 352 

XXI. Address to Seekers of Full Salvation.. 364 

XXII. An Address to Believers Made Perfect 

in Love 392 



LOVE ENTHRONED. 



■*•»•» 



CHAPTER I. 

LOVE REVEALED. 

\ X THAT a mystery is love! We cannot 
* * define it ; we can only indicate it by 
describing the occasion on which it arises in 
the soul. If human love is inexplicable, Di- 
vine love is an ocean too deep for the plum- 
met of man or archangel; too broad to be 
bounded by the thought of the loftiest intel- 
ligence in the universe. He who knows not 
in his inmost consciousness the love of God, 
will find this book sealed to his understanding. 
It can only be unlocked by the key of experi- 
ence. Love is not a product of the reason. 
It is the free play of the spiritual sensibilities 
in the possession of its object. God is not 
only love, but he is love revealed. The per- 
fect love of God toward man is designed to 
call forth perfect love toward God in man's 



1 6 Love Enthroned. 

bosom. Though the mirror on which that love 
is reflected is broken into uneven planes and 
reflects a distorted image, — though the human 
soul at its best earthly estate under grace is 
shattered by infirmities and incurable imper- 
fections, — yet the love which man cherishes 
toward God may flow with all the united force 
of his being. The history of God's intercourse 
with men is the chronicle of his love. This 
is the only history which will outlive time 
itself, and escape the conflagration which will 
burn up the world and all the works therein. 
This will be our text-book forever. We can 
contemplate no more sublime and ennobling 
theme. The brightness of the material uni- 
verse pales before the splendors of the Divine 
character — that central fire which kindles the 
souls of seraphs in heaven and melts the hearts 
of sinners on earth. Thus is the science of 
the divine Heart infinitely above the science 
of the almighty Hand. 

In love revealed there are ceaseless won- 
ders. Our surprise is ever new when we dis- 
cover that God so loves our entire race that 
he gave his well-beloved Son to the humilia- 
tion of the manger, the mockery of Gabbatha, 



Love Revealed. if 

the agonies of Gethsemane, and the ignominy 
of Calvary. But this was but the beginning 
of his beneficence. Since the Son of God has 
gone up to be glorified and worshiped by all 
the celestial orders, the loving Father has be- 
stowed an abiding gift, the Holy Spirit, to 
whisper in the ear of spiritual death the words 
of life, to pardon penitence, and fully restore 
the lost image of God. The greatest marvels 
of the gospel scheme are not in the facts of 
Christ's earthly life, death, and resurrection, 
but in the wondrous transformation wrought 
by the Holy Spirit in the soul of the believer 
who apprehends the exceeding greatness of 
his power to us-ward who believe. A less sur- 
prise is the fact that the eternal Logos should 
inseparably unite himself with a spotless hu- 
man body and soul than that the Holy Spirit, 
co-equal with the Father and the Son, should 
first completely cleanse a polluted man, and 
then change his heart from a " cage of unclean 
birds " into " a holy temple " and make it the 
habitation of God. This is a mystery of mys- 
teries with all who have experienced the love 
of God perfectly shed abroad in their hearts. 

The age of miracles is not past. Jesus changed 

2 



1 8 Love Enthroned. 

unresisting water into wine, but the Holy 
Ghost transfigures the sinful soul bristling with 
antagonisms, transforming depravity to purity 
by the mighty alchemy of love. The power 
to effect such revolutions in character con- 
stitutes the standing miracle of Christianity. 
" Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir- 
tree" — tenderness instead of cruelty — " instead 
of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree " — 
the gentle graces instead of stinging hatreds — 
" and it shall be to the Lord for a name," in- 
dicating his nature, and " for an everlasting 
sign, that shall not be cut off." The Holy 
Ghost, holding up to the gaze of the world 
specimens of his sanctifying power in the form 
of purified characters and inspired activities 
for Christ, is the ceaseless miracle-worker at- 
testing Christian truth in an age of intense 
materialism, selfishness, and unbelief. 

God has begun to save every human soul. 
He has already saved the entire race from the 
extinction threatened in the instantaneous ex- 
ecution of the death penalty upon Adam and 
Eve in the garden of Eden in the moment of 
their first transgression. The remedial dispen- 
sation began with the promise that the Seed 



Love Revealed, 19 

of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. 
The children of the pair banished from Eden, 
and fallen from their high estate, are born in 
the likeness of their sinful parents, with tre- 
mendous proclivities toward sin in the strength 
of their passions and the bent of their wills. 
Yet they come into being under the dispen- 
sation of mercy. They have a gracious ability 
to repent. They are saved from that com- 
plete moral inability which paralyses the will 
of the fallen angels in the direction of obedi- 
ence to the moral law. This ability to resist 
the downward tendency of their nature, and 
to turn from sin, is, through the influences 
of the Holy Spirit, procured by Jesus Christ 
for all the race. " He will reprove the world 
of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment/' 
Through the atonement every soul is in a salv- 
able state. By assenting to the facts and truths 
of the Gospel, and by relying solely on its Au- 
thor, every penitent sinner may be saved from 
the guilt of sin. If any one fails to submit to 
the Divine plan of salvation, the merciful pur- 
pose of God is defeated, and the initial salva- 
tion never becomes actual and final. Through 
an abuse of the godlike attribute of freedom 



20 Love Enthroned. 

man may withstand all the suasives of the Fa- 
ther, Son, and Holy Spirit, and create for himself 
a destiny of endless sorrow. The human will 
is an independent fountain of causation, itself 
uncaused in all its moral volitions. " What- 
ever the good man is, he is through God and 
his own will ; the evil man, however, is so only 
through his own will, for evil is falling away 
from God." Hence the following theological 
axiom of Fletcher : " All damnation flows from 
man, all salvation flows from God." He saves 
all that he can without a violation of the sacred 
prerogative of freedom. " Turn ye, turn ye — 
why will ye die ? " Thus love is revealed as 
dominant over this world ; not a fondling sen- 
timentalism, but a holy principle, ever acting 
in accordance with wisdom and justice ; saving 
the penitent, persevering believer, and consum- 
ing with flaming fire all who, by incorrigible 
disobedience, thrust from themselves the cover 
of the atoning blood. 

The extent of this conquest of love over 
the believing soul in the present world, is a 
theme which has elicited intense interest 
through all the Christian ages. At times the 
grace of God has been magnified, and many 



Love Revealed. 21 

have proved that he can do " exceeding abun- 
dantly above all that we ask or think ;" while 
at other times this great Christian privilege of 
evangelical perfection, or perfect love, has 
gone into an eclipse, partial or total, and the 
Church has groped in the darkness, benumbed 
by the chilling cold. 



22 Love Enthroned 



CHAPTER II. 

LOVE MILITANT. 

SO long as sin is in the world love must 
make war against it. Jesus came forth 
from the bosom of the Father's love to send 
a sword upon the earth. The cross is a cen- 
ter of forces hostile to sin. The sinful soul is 
a fortress filled with armed enemies to Im- 
manuel. The successive approaches of love 
to its conquest and complete possession are — 

I. The offer of pardon through the atoning 
blood of Jesus Christ. 

Justification, or the pardon of sin through 
faith in Jesus Christ, is an act which takes 
place in the mind of the Moral Governor of the 
universe, whereby he removes guilt, or severs 
the link between sin and punishment, and ac- 
counts the penitent believer in Christ as if he 
had never sinned. It does not change the 
nature from wicked to just, as its Latin ety- 
mology— -Justus and facia — would signify. It 
is a work wrought for the soul, and wholly ex- 



Love Militant. 23 

ternal to it, and is by faith only. No member 
of the human family, Jesus excepted, can suc- 
cessfully plead that he has perfectly kept the 
law of God, and is in consequence of his good 
works worthy of His approval. " By the deeds 
of the law shall no flesh be justified." From 
making this plea " every mouth is stopped." 
We are in no sense of the term acquitted. We 
are, after conviction and condemnation, par- 
doned through executive clemency, induced 
by the mediation of the Son of God. 

But a pardoned criminal is not necessar- 
ily a good citizen. Pardon has changed his 
relation to the law, but not his hostility toward 
the governor. A change must take place 
within him. He must be reconstructed. We 
now come to the second step in the conquest 
of the soul by love divine. 

2. Regeneration, or the New Birth, is a 
change wrought within the soul by the power 
of the Holy Ghost, creating within the soul a 
new spiritual life, a life of loyalty and love. 

By nature men are the children of wrath. 
They are spiritually dead. The faith faculty 
exists, but is in a paralysis so far as spiritual 
objects are concerned. The divine life be- 



24 Love Enthroned. 

gins with the seed of God implanted in the 
soul. This is the new principle of love. " For 
the love of God is shed abroad in the heart by 
the Holy Ghost." The phrase " love of God " 
may signify either God's love to me or my love 
to God. In this quotation it has the former 
meaning. The Scriptures teach us that God 
is love. But this is not enough to give me as- 
surance of his favor so long as I read that he 
is angry with the wicked every day. There- 
fore, so long as I have a tormenting sense of 
guilt, I must be filled with painful forebod- 
ings till I have a positive and personal as- 
surance that I am taken out of the class of the 
condemned, and am reconciled to God, who 
loves me, even me. This is the witness of the 
Spirit, the third advance toward the complete 
conquest. He is styled the Spirit of Adop- 
tion, because as such his chief message is to 
attest to the believer his pardon and sonship. 
When this glad evangel resounds within, love 
to God springs up responsive to his great love 
to me. This is a new motive power. It rein- 
forces the ethical feeling, the sense of obligation 
to right action. The bare perception of right, 
with no strong impulse toward it, while the 



Love Militant. 25 

appetites and passions are drawing in the op- 
posite direction, constitutes the painful warfare 
between the flesh and the spirit, entailing upon 
the latter the sense of degrading bondage. 

44 1 see the right, and I approve it too ; 
I see the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue. ' 

But this new motive makes it easy to obey the 
law, because we love the Lawgiver. Hence 
love is the fulfilling of the law ; not as a sub- 
stitute for keeping the precepts and abstain- 
ing from the prohibitions of the moral law, 
but as an inspiration of the very spirit of obe- 
dience. But this new principle is spoken of by 
St. John as only a^seed when first implanted. 
It implies future germination, growth, and 
fruitage. It is to spread its branches till it 
fills the heart, and by absorbing all the fertil- 
ity of the soil, and by completely overshadow- 
ing all other plants, destroys their life. Till 
this maturity of the seed, the moral condition 
of the heart will be mixed ; good and evil will 
struggle for the ascendency. Nevertheless, if 
faith in Christ — the weapon of victory — con- 
tinues, the actions will be right, though the 
result of painful effort to keep the moribund 



26 Love Enthroned. 

evil within from breaking out into manifesta- 
tion. For manifestation is the tendency of 
every principle. After the maturity of love, 
the Divine seed, all its antagonists will be 
excluded. Evil will still be presented to the 
choice, but from no foothold within. Perfect 
love will cast out, not only fear, but all the 
hateful progeny of depravity. This is entire 
sanctification. It began with the seed-grain 
of holiness sown in regeneration. 

There is no new principle involved. The 
oak is only the acorn unfolded. Yet regen- 
eration, completed in sanctification, is not the 
highest up-reaching of the Divine life in the 
soul. It is only the beginning of its whole- 
ness. All the forces of the soul, for the first 
time, move Godward. "Unite my heart," says 
the Psalmist, " to fear thy name." He prayed 
for perfection in Divine love, when every war- 
ring foe shall be removed and all the powers be 
subsidized for the service of God. Up to this 
point the old nature, though dying, has lin- 
gered and mingled with the new. Dying unto 
sin and living unto God have co-existed. The 
destructive and the reconstructive processes 
have gone on side by side. There is an absolute 



Love Militant. 27 

end to the former when there is nothing more 
to be destroyed : there is no end to the lat- 
ter. The negative work must of necessity end 
when sin is dead ; the positive work of spiritual 
adornment, strength, and growth, must go on 
so long as the soul is capable of advancement. 

It becomes necessary at this point to indi- 
cate the salient points of difference between the 
new birth and that maturity of Christian char- 
acter which St. Paul denominates the " meas- 
ure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." 

The relation of regeneration to entire sanc- 
tification is that of a part to a whole. There 
are other specific differences. 

1.) In the state of mind preceding each. In 
the one case the eye is fixed on the past sins, 
and a sense of guilt and repentance fills the bit- 
ter cup ; in the other, the soul looks inward 
upon itself, and self-abhorrence for the un- 
lovely qualities disclosed to the anointed eye 
is the dominant feeling, without, however, a 
sense of Divine wrath. 

2.) In the object for which the soul strives— 
pardon in the first case, and purity in the second. 

3.) In the manner of attaining these bless- 
ings. Both are by faith; but the penitent 



28 Love Enthroned. 

sinner lays hold of Jesus dying on the cross, 
while the regenerated aspirant after a clean 
heart more distinctly apprehends Jesus living 
on the throne. The one thinks of his mercy, 
the other of his almightiness. There is a dif- 
ference in the submission of the will. The 
sinner, thinking chiefly of his own salvation, 
surrenders, grounding his weapons like a con- 
quered rebel. The regenerate soul, like a 
patriot seeking the salvation of his country, 
gladly pours all his possessions into the treas- 
ury, a free-will offering, and counts it a privi- 
lege to enlist, soul and body, in the army. 
The one cries, "God be merciful to me a sin- 
ner ;" the other prays, "Father, glorify thy- 
self in me." The consecration of the latter 
is far more intelligent, deliberate, and in de- 
tail, because of his superior self-knowledge 
under the illumination of the Holy Spirit. 
His eager cry is, 

"Welcome, welcome, dear Redeemer, 
Welcome to this heart of mine. 

Lord, I make a full surrender, 

Every thought and power be thine, 

Thine entirely, through eternal ages thine." 

4.) But the greatest difference is in the bless- 
ings received. Regeneration is a great and 



Love Militant. 29 

glorious change. It is the beginning of the 
new life. The regenerate man is a new crea- 
ture in Christ Jesus. To him all things have 
become new. New heavens are above, and a 
new earth is beneath. He has been translated 
out of darkness into a marvelous light. The 
angel of mercy has descended and rolled away 
the stone from the sepulcher, and the dead 
soul has come forth. The great Emancipator 
has descended to the prison-door with the 
trump of jubilee at his lips and the key of 
deliverance in his right hand. Regeneration 
is a wonderful change — a new creation, an 
emergence out of darkness — a manumission 
from the most abject slavery, a resurrection 
from the dead. Yea, more than all this. By 
adoption he becomes a son of God, an heir, 
a joint heir with Christ. Like Joseph, he 
goes from the prison to the throne. Yet like 
Joseph, he is still in Egypt. A wilderness 
intervenes between him and the Land of 
Promise. Toward that Canaan he turns a 
wistful eye, for to him it is 

11 A land of corn, an d wine, and oil, 
Favored with God's peculiar smile, 
With every blessing blessed." 



30 Love Enthroned. 

He longs for that rest, and looks for the 
Joshua who shall lead him in, conquer his foes, 
and allot him his portion on the mountain of 
God. The justified state, glorious though it 
be, is eclipsed by the outbeaming splendors of 
a more excellent glory yet unattained. There 
is a sense of vacuity still in the soul, and a 
feeling that there is an attainable fullness in 
Christ correlated to this felt want. As the 
hart panteth after the water brooks, so pants 

this unfilled soul after God. Unrest, hunger- 
ings and thirstings after righteousness, grati- 
tude for the stream, and a longing to fol- 
low it up to the fountain, characterize the jus- 
tified state. The marvelous light sometimes 
fades away into twilight ; clouds often overcast 
the sky; and there are times when neither sun 
nor stars appear. O for an abode on some 
mountain summit, which lifts its head above 
the clouds into the eternal sunshine ! a dwell- 
ing-place in the land of Beulah, where the sun 
shines day and night all the year round ! 

5.) The witness of the Spirit is intermittent 
in the justified state, and abiding in entire 
sanctification, excluding every doubt. Here is 
a marked distinction. Constant assurance is 



Love Militant. 31 

requisite to perpetual rest in Christ. This 
comes only from the Comforter abiding in the 
fullness of his grace. Before regeneration the 
soul trusts in Jesus Christ ; but before entire 
sanctification we must believe in the Holy 
Ghost, the Sanctifier, inasmuch as he has a 
distinct office. 

6.) A still more important difference lies in 
the sense of defilement which humbles and 
distresses the justified soul, and the delightful 
sense of inward purity which is felt when the 
Sanctifier makes his conscious abode within. 
The promise seems to be fulfilled on the 
earth. " They shall walk with me in white, 
for they are worthy." This assurance of heart- 
cleansing is something more than an inference 
drawn from the soul's easy victory over temp- 
tation ; it is intuitively perceived under the il- 
lumination of the Spirit. The Sanctifier is not 
satisfied with doing his work only in the myste- 
rious depths of our nature ; he reveals the puri- 
fication to our consciousness, filling us with joy 
unspeakable. Whether this revelation is the 
witness of the Spirit in the technical language 
of theology or not, it is the voice of the Com- 
forter speaking very comforting words : "I have 



p Love Enthroned. 

washed thee with water from all thy filthiness, 
and from all thy idols I have cleansed thee." 

7.) The justified or regenerate person often 
finds it difficult to say sincerely and heartily, 
" Thy will be done." Self still asserts its ex- 
istence as a force opposing the will of God. 
There is, at times, a painful duality in the 
soul, " the flesh (self-will) warring against the 
Spirit." At such times there is little peace 
and less joy. Entire sanctification completely 
harmonizes the conflict by enabling the human 
to acquiesce delightfully in the Divine will. 
" Christian perfection," says Fletcher, " ex- 
tends chiefly to the will, which is the capital 
moral power of the soul, leaving the under- 
standing ignorant of ten thousand things, and 
the body l dead because of sin.' " * 

8.) The joy that attends perfect love, in its 
depth, solidity, richness, and permanency, far 
transcends the joy of the regenerate state. It 
is the testimony of many witnesses, that in 
point of ecstatic emotion the transition into 
entire holiness is far more wonderful than the 
translation of the penitent believer from the 
darkness of spiritual death into the kingdom 

* Checks, vol. ii, p. 489. 



Love Militant. 33 

of light. But this is not always the case. As 
some are converted without a sudden and 
sharply-defined joy, like a tropical sunrise 
ever memorable in their history, so some 
mount up into the heights of perfect love as 
gradually as the dawn climbs the eastern sky. 
But even in these cases, there is a moment 
when the rising sun pours his light upon their 
waiting eyes. 

9.) An important distinction between these 
two states of Christian experience— the new 
birth and the fullness of love — lies in the dis- 
tinction between the gift and the Giver. We 
may selfishly clamor for the gift, but with a 
perfect identity of interest with Christ do we 
welcome to our hearts the Giver of every 
good and every perfect gift. Hence the supe- 
rior permanency of the Giver over the* gift. 
The latter may be evanescent, while the for- 
mer abides. The former is a lighted lamp, 
but the latter superadds the vessel filled with 
oil, which typifies the Holy Spirit.* 

3. Adoption is the incorporation of a per- 
son into the family of God, with the investiture 
of all the prerogatives of sonship and rights 

* See Dean Alford on the Parable of the Ten Virgins. 
3 



34 Love Enthroned. 

of heirship. It is an exalted honor. " But 
as many as received him, to them gave he 
power to become the sons of God, even to as 
many as believe on his name." " For as 
many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are 
the sons of God." Earth's highest dignities 
sink into meanness in contrast with " the row 
of glorified brothers, with the Son of God at 
the head." This adoption is simultaneous 
with justification and regeneration, and is at- 
tested by a special message from God to the 
believer's consciousness. 

4. The witness of the Spirit, which has al- 
ready been alluded to in this chapter, is the 
testimony of the Holy Ghost immediately to 
my soul, assuring me that I am born of God, 
and that the blood of Christ has washed away 
my sins. The messenger is called the Spirit 
of Adoption, because it is one of his pecul- 
iar offices to inspire the joyful cry, "Abba, 
Father." It differs from the testimony of the 
fruit of the Spirit in this, that in the latter 
there is an inference that we are sons of God, 
because we see the correspondence between 
their characteristics as noted in the Bible, and 
those observed in ourselves. This inference 



Love Militant. 35 

will never be indubitable and satisfactory 
much less joyful, unless it be preceded by the 
direct witness as above defined. Both must 
go together. The inferential or corroboratory 
must always accompany the immediate testi- 
mony of the Spirit, as a safeguard against 
deception and fanaticism. While the direct 
voice must be added to the indirect testimony 
of the Spirit, which is the attestation of our 
own consciousness, in order to keep us from 
sinking into despair or falling into a flatter- 
ing and fatal mistake, the direct testimony of 
the spirit of adoption must be preached and 
held up as the privilege of the child of God, 
in order to that faith requisite for its reception. 
In the great revival under the preaching of 
Whitefield and the Wesleys, ninety-nine out 
of every hundred of the converts attested their 
reception of the Spirit of adoption speaking 
directly to their hearts. This privilege was 
specially presented to penitents by those 
great evangelists, and emphatically by the 
Wesleys. 

The direct witness of the Spirit is, in usual 
cases, especially in young converts, intermit- 
tent, either through fluctuations of faith, or 



36 Love Enthroned. 

through some mysterious, but doubtless benefi- 
cent, law of the mind. In Christians of emi- 
nent devotion to God and strong faith, these 
intervals are infrequent and brief, and the 
tendency is toward an uninterrupted testimo- 
ny of the abiding Comforter, or the higher 
Christian life. This office of the Spirit is 
most plainly taught in St. Paul's epistles. 
See Rom. viii, 15, 16; Gal. iv, 6. The same 
is taught in 1 John iii, 24; iv, 13 ; v, 10. In 
figurative language Jesus taught the same 
doctrine on various occasions. See John vii, 
37-39. He explicitly unfolded this great priv- 
ilege in the promise of the Comforter, John 
xiv, although this comprises much more than 
the witness of adoption. The greater includes 
the less. 

The Old Testament hints at this blessing in 
such expressions as this : " The secret of the 
Lord is with them that fear him." It is the 
source of the blessedness of him " whose in- 
iquity is forgiven, whose sin is covered/' 



Love Triumphant over Original Sin, 37 



CHAPTER III. 

LOVE TRIUMPHANT OVER ORIGINAL SIN. 

THE spirit of sin, or inbred sin, technically 
called original sin, because it is inherited 
from Adam, is the state of heart out of which 
acts of sin either actually flow or tend to flow. 
Until this state is changed, the conquest of 
love over the soul is incomplete. Regenera- 
tion introduces a power which checks the out- 
breaking of original into actual sin, except 
occasional and almost involuntary sallies in 
moments of weakness or unwatchfulness. 
These are a source of grief and condem- 
nation to the justified soul. They are a hu- 
miliating, yet only temporary defeat. For 
there is with all well-instructed believers a 
resort to the blood of sprinkling, and a 
pleading of the promise, " If any man sin, 
we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus 
Christ the righteous." We do not say that 
all justified persons experience these defeats. 
All may, and some doubtless do, live with- 



38 Love Enthroned, 

out condemnation from the glad moment of 
pardon; yet the testimony of the Church 
shows that these are rare exceptions. The 
majority, in the struggle with inbred sin, are 
not always victorious. What is the difference, 
then, between sin in a sinner, and sin in a 
believer? The same difference that there is 
between poison in a rattlesnake and the virus 
of that serpent injected into a healthy man. 
The venom is natural to the reptile. He 
delights in it, secretes and cherishes it with 
pleasure. But all the vital forces of the man 
resist the injected poison, and ially to thrust 
it out of the system. We have shown else- 
where that the seventh chapter of the Epistle 
to the Romans was not designed by St. Paul 
as an ideal of the regenerate life, even in its 
lowest stages. But so true is the doctrine of 
sin in believers — inbred sin — sometimes break- 
ing out against the enfeebled will, that a whole 
section of the Christian world have mistaken 
the struggles of an awakened legalist seeking 
justification by good works, and failing through 
the ascendency of depraved inclination, for 
the portrait of the Christian in his best estate 
in this life. This photograph of a Christless, 



Love Triumphant over Original Sin. 39 

convicted Jew, has, alas ! been set before myr- 
iads of Christians as the masterpiece of that 
Jesus who came to save his people from their 
sins, the best specimen of his art as a Divine 
limner even when aided by the great trans- 
former, the Holy Spirit. 

This class of Christians do not need argu- 
ments to convince them of the possible exist- 
ence of sin in believers. It is difficult for 
them to believe that they may live on the 
earth after sin is all destroyed. Since nature 
abhors a vacuum in the spiritual as in the phys- 
ical world, the complete and permanent an- 
nihilation of sin as a state of heart must be 
attended by the infusion of perfect love, by 
which we mean love in a degree commensu- 
rate with the utmost capacity of the soul. 
Hence the coup de grace, the death-blow which 
ends the war of love against sin, is a negative 
and limited work, to be followed by a work 
positive and unlimited. The first is the re- 
moval of all impurity, whether inherent or 
acquired ; the second is being " filled with all 
the fullness of God." It is the adorning of the 
soul with all the fruits of the Spirit — love, joy, 
peace, long-sufifering, gentleness, meekness, 



40 Love Enthroned. 

fidelity, patience, and temperance. Since there 
are some who believe that the negative work, 
the destruction of the very spirit of sin, or pro- 
clivity toward sin, takes place when the soul 
is born again, we will briefly present our ob- 
jections to this doctrine. 

I. It is contrary to universal Christian ex- 
perience. In all ages and in all Christian 
lands, always and every-where, resounds the 
wail of truly regenerate souls over the an- 
tagonisms of Divine love discovered in them 
under the illumination of the Holy Spirit. In 
passing from death unto life they have passed 
into a conflict not only with the world and 
Satan, but also with the flesh — the perverse 
tendencies of their own natures. Now one of 
three things must be true. Either these have 
all made a mistake in calling themselves re- 
generate, or they have all backslidden from 
a regenerate state, or they are truly regener- 
ate while struggling with the remains of the 
carnal mind. To insist that the first is true 
is to assert the delusion of the whole body of 
believers in respect to the most vital point — 
sonship to God. To assume the second sup- 
position is to declare the apostasy of the 



Love Triumphant over Original Sin. 4 1 

Church in each of its members very soon after 
conversion — an appalling hypothesis. The 
third alternative saves the Church from the 
theories of delusion and of apostasy, and is in 
perfect harmony with universal testimony. 

2. It contradicts the creed of all the ortho- 
dox branches of the Church universal from 
primitive Christianity to the present day. The 
Greek and the Roman, the Anglican, and every 
reformed Church of Europe and America, agree 
that there is an infection of nature remaining 
in them that are regenerated. Augustine and 
Calvin are not stronger in their assertion of 
this fact than are Arminius and Wesley.* It 
is no small presumption in favor of the truth 
of a doctrine, that it has remained unques- 
tioned through all the fierce battles of polem- 
ical theologians, and all the reforms of the 
Church, and all the restatements of Christian 
truth. Fragmentary sects may for a time dis- 
sent from the orthodox opinion, and either 
pass away or return again to the common faith, 
as did Count Zinzendorf and his Moravian fol- 



* " The moment a sinner is justified, his heart is cleansed in 
a low degree ; but yet he has not a clean heart in the full, 
proper sense, till he is made perfect in love." — John Wesley. 



42 Love Enthroned. 

lowers in London, in the last century. For a 
time, these excellent people taught the entire 
sanctification of the soul in the moment of the 
new birth. But so contradictory was this view 
to their own experience, and so destructive of 
confidence in Christ on the part of weak be- 
lievers, that it was at length abandoned. 

So strongly have believers since the Apos- 
tolic age been impressed with the imperfect 
cure of the soul in regeneration, that many 
have believed that the entire healing must be 
deferred either till death or purgatorial fires 
shall complete the purification. 

3. It is unphilosophical. The deeper the 
stain the greater must be the power of the 
chemicals applied to remove it. The blood of 
Christ is the cleansing power. The degree of 
efficacy is proportional to the faith of the in- 
dividual. No faith, no purification; perfect 
trust, complete cleansing. Is it reasonable 
that this perfect trust should be exercised by 
an awakened sinner in his first apprehension 
of Jesus Christ. Is it philosophical to assert 
that one filled with doubts, and weakened 
and appalled by the terrors of the Lord thun- 
dering from Mount Sinai, will then put forth 



Love Triumphant over Original Sin. 43 

his highest act of faith ? We aver that it is 
far more reasonable to suppose that the high- 
est capacity of faith is attained after much ex- 
ercise. If the confidence of man in man is a 
plant of slow growth, it is natural that the 
highest confidence of man in God should re* 
quire time for its maturity. It is certainly not 
unreasonable that there should be two dis- 
tinct operations of the Holy Spirit to neutral- 
ize the sin in our nature, which has a twofold 
source — the soul's own sinful acts, and the sin 
of Adam injecting a stream of corruption into 
humanity. 

The most modern statement and defense 
of this erroneous doctrine is found in the 
" Moral Philosophy'* of Dr. Fairchild, Presi- 
dent of Oberlin College. In his chapter on 
the " Unity or Simplicity of Moral Action, " he 
elaborates an argument to prove that virtue, 
wherever it exists, is entire and complete, 
with no mixture of impurity; and that there 
is room only for its more firm establishment, 
persistency, and fortification by habit. He 
answers the testimony of multitudes of im- 
mature Christians to the consciousness of a 
mixed state of sin and holiness, by asserting 



44 Love Enthroned. 

that these do not co-exist, but they succeed 
each other very rapidly. " The general im- 
pression of deficient goodness is admitted ; 
and the fact of deficiency is also admitted ; 
but it is a deficiency which arises from the 
alternation of good and evil in the heart." 
He explains away the consciousness of good 
and evil by asserting that "it is not so definite 
as to discriminate between these two forms 
of mixture," namely, concomitancy and alter- 
nation. Just here we are impelled to ask 
whether Christ Jesus has any immediate salva- 
tion from the mixture of alternation ? What- 
ever the kind of mixture, it needs purifying. 
Are the lapse of time and the slow formation 
of virtuous habits the only saviour ? We ap- 
prehend that the answer will be, that habit is 
our only redeemer from this wretched state ; 
that the same embarrassment surrounds the 
new creation of the soul as, according to Bish- 
op Butler, attended the creation of Adam — 
the impossibility of creating a being with good 
habits. According to the Oberlin theory of 
the perfect purity of the soul after regenera- 
tion, the distinctive work of the Sanctifier is 
no more needed. Henceforth He should be 



Lave Triumphant over Original Sin. 45 

called the Confirmer. But this would be a 
misnomer, for the soul must, by the very sig- 
nification of habit, establish itself by repeated 
virtuous acts. 

Dr. Fairchild's theory contradicts the con- 
sciousness of multitudes of such minds as a,re 
able to discriminate between concomitancy 
and alternation; even when they testify to the 
presence of a felt antagonism within them- 
selves disturbing their peace and filling them 
with grief. The theory involves the false as- 
sumption of Dugald Stewart, that mind is 
capable of only a single action at one instant 
of time — that we hear only one note of the 
piano, and see only one point in the land- 
scape, at one and the same instant — and 
that the apparent variety of sounds and vast- 
ness of landscape is due to the rapidity with 
which the mind passes from sound to sound 
only apparently co-existent, and the eye un- 
consciously passes from point to point in the 
landscape. This is shown by Sir William 
Hamilton to be erroneous. He demonstrates 
that the mind may, with abated force, fol- 
low two or three trains of thought at the same 
time. 



46 Love Enthroned. 

4. But our chief objection to this doctrine 
is its unscriptural character. St. Paul is ad- 
dressing believers, and portraying their char- 
acter, when he writes, Gal. v, 17, "The flesh 
lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against 
the flesh. These are contrary the one to the 
other." If the Apostle had been writing to 
counteract this modern error which confounds 
two distinct operations of the Spirit, regener- 
ation and sanctification, he could not have 
more expressly antagonized it than he has in 
this passage. For he asserts that even in the 
regenerate there is a warfare between two op- 
posing principles ; and the aim of the epistle 
is to end the contest by the complete ascend- 
ancy of the Spirit, and the extinction of the 
flesh or evil nature. 

But one passage of Scripture effectually de- 
molishes this theory of the complete sanctifi- 
cation of the soul in the new birth. "And I, 
brethren, could not speak unto you as unto 
spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto 
babes in Christ/' 1 Cor. iii, 1. These brethren, 
babes in Christ, could not be styled wholly, 
or predominantly, spiritual in their state, for 
St. Paul is speaking of their state, and not of 



Love Triumphant over Original Sin. 47 

their acts, which are described in the third 
verse. They had been born into the kingdom 
by the Holy Spirit, because they are styled 
babes in Christ, and addressed as brethren ; 
and in the salutation (chap, i, 2) they are 
styled "saints," or holy ones. Nevertheless 
St. Paul, with his utmost stretch of charity, 
cannot truthfully call them spiritual, that is, 
perfectly holy, for their old fleshly nature was 
too strongly manifesting itself. Here acts of 
sin cannot be said to alternate with acts of ho- 
liness, for St. Paul is not yet speaking of what 
they do but of what they are, and they are 
co-existently carnal and babes in Christ. Dr. 
Edward Robinson, in the earlier editions of 
his " New Testament Greek Lexicon," endeav- 
ored to tone down this apparent contradiction 
in terms by inventing a softened meaning to 
oapftiKolg, carnal, in this verse and in the third, 
as being merely " weak, frail, imperfect," and 
not " implying sinfulness." But it was so 
evident that this definition originated in the 
author's dogmatical opinions, and not in the 
principles of sound lexicography, that in his 
last revision he abandoned this definition of 
the term as applied to persons. 



48 Love Enthroned. 

We have dwelt at length on this mischiev- 
ous identity of entire sanctification with justi- 
fication in point of time, 

1. Because it tends to make young Chris- 
tians abandon their trust in Christ when they 
discover sin still lurking within. 

2. Those who do hold fast to Christ are by 
this doctrine excluded from seeing the great 
and glorious privilege of full salvation attain- 
able on earth, and are left to a low and mixed 
spiritual state. 

3. The census of the Christian Church in 
all the world would be reduced from millions 
to units. For, if this doctrine be true, we 
must count as regenerate only such as experi- 
enced entire sanctification in the new birth. 
John Wesley, who, from his extensive travels, 
and practice of personal inspection of his soci- 
eties by searching questions, had a wider ac- 
quaintance with experimental Christians than 
any other man since the days of St. Paul, is a 
competent witness on this point. " But we do 
not know a single instance in any place,' ' says 
Wesley,* " of a person's receiving in one and 
the same moment remission of sins, the abiding 

* " Plain Account of Christian Perfection," page 34. 



Love Triumphant over Original Sin. 49 

witness of the Spirit, and a new, a clean heart/' 
If Wesley, in his more than fourscore years, 
never met with such a person, it is safe to say 
that their number at any one time in the Church 
universal could be counted on one's fingers. 

Admitting that the dominion of sin is broken 
while its being still remains after the love of 
God, the new seed of divine life, is implanted 
in the heart, we proceed to show that there is 
a salvation from original sin in this life. All 
admit that sin must all be destroyed before 
we can enter the abodes of the saints in light. 
This purification cannot take place after death 
without involving the papal purgatory. If it is 
done in the moment of death, it makes the king 
of terrors the complete Saviour, To avoid 
both of these absurdities we must believe that 
we are to be entirely sanctified in this life. 

Before the Son of God came in the flesh, a 
name indicative of his great work was pre- 
pared for him, and prophetically announced by 
the angel. That name was a heroic name in 
the Hebrew annals, and resonant of victory — 
Joshua, Saviour. He was not to save politi- 
cally, but individually, not from Roman power, 
but from servility to sin. ' He shall save his 



5o Love Enthroned. 

people from their sins." In the promise, His in 
the Greek lacks the emphasis which would have 
confined it to the Jews. The word sins here 
signifies not punishment merely, " but is the 
sin itself — the practice of sin in its most pieg- 
nant sense." Dean Alford, by the use of this 
strong term pregnant, evidently means sin in 
embryo, the state of heart out of which acts 
of sin are born: "Lust, when it hath con- 
ceived, bringeth forth the sin." Jesus will 
save not only from the birth, but from the 
conception of sin, by lust entering in with its 
defilement. That this is the correct exegesis 
of this Scripture will be evident by attending 
to Peter's discourse in Solomon's Porch, in 
which he interprets the mission of Christ, 
" Unto you first, God having raised up his Son 
Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away 
every one of you from his iniquities." Acts 
iii, 26. Bengel's comment sets this great 
blessing in its true light : " He turns away 
both us from wickedness, and ungodliness (un- 
godlikeness) from us." He turns us away 
from committing sin, and removes from us the 
aptitude for wickedness. The sense in which 
we have used the term aptitude will soon be 



Love Triumpliant over Original Sin. 51 

explained. But as if to put forever beyond 
dispute the purpose of the incarnation, and to 
point out the summits of Christian privilege 
so tar as relates to sin, St. John says, " For 
this purpose the Son of God was manifested, 
that he might destroy the works of the devil. " 
1 John iii, 8. Pre-eminently the work of 
the devil is to produce a state of alienation 
from God. The first work of Satan on earth 
was to induce in Eve a state of distrust to- 
ward her Creator. Plucking the forbidden 
fruit was her act. The aptitude for this act 
was formed actively by Satan's artful insinua- 
tions, and passively by Eve in listening to 
them. To destroy the chief and crowning 
work of the devil, is to redeem man from this 
very aptitude. " Depravity of all consists in 
this, that in all alike is the capacity for the ex- 
tremest wickedness. And it is redemption even 
from that capacity that man needs."* The term 
capacity is not to be confounded with possibility. 
It was possible for Adam to sin, but he must 
first acquire a capacity or aptitude for it by 
listening to those suggestions which weakened 
faith and chilled the ardor of love. George 

* Dr. Whedon on Rom. i, 1 8. 



52 Love Enthroned. 

Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards did not 
have in their Christian maturity the capacity 
to rob a bank, though it was possible for them, 
under the subtle power of temptation, to have 
admitted by imperceptible degrees the spirit 
of avarice, and to have so far fallen from faith 
in God, the great sheet-anchor of all true rec- 
titude, so as to have taken on that capacity 
for burglary. This explains the declaration 
of St. John, that he that is born of God sin- 
neth not ; " For his seed remaineth in him ; 
and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." 
John, having in mind one in whom the work 
of regeneration has been fully accomplished 
by the perfection of the regenerating principle 
of love, asserts the incapacity or inaptitude of 
such a soul, while abiding in Christ, to commit 
a known and willful sin. 

We conclude our argument on this point by 
an examination of the assertion that in regen- 
eration the soul is entirely sanctified because 
the new birth is a Divine work, and God's 
works are always perfect. Often we hear the 
declaration that when God regenerates the 
penitent believer he does it thoroughly; there 
is no half-finished work proceeding from the 



Love Triumphant over Ortgi?ial Sin. 53 

hand of the perfect and omnipotent Artist. 
Now it does not follow that because God is 
perfect, eveiy thing that comes from him must 
be perfect also. Look abroad through nature 
and you will find many imperfections — de- 
formed animals, trees gnarled and twisted, in 
high latitudes pines dwarfed to mere ferns, in 
all climes abortive blossoms and windfall fruits, 
and children born with poisonous humors in 
their blood, or incipient tubercles in their 
lungs. God's works are always perfect where 
the conditions are perfect. He does not pro- 
duce perfect oranges in Alaska, nor perfect 
apples in Florida, nor models in human stat- 
ure in Lapland, nor Caucasian fairness of 
complexion in Africa. It is thus in his spirit- 
ual kingdom. Perfect saints are developed 
only under appropriate conditions — perfect 
faith in Jesus Christ, evinced by an entire sur- 
render to his will. But as the wonderful crea- 
tive tendency of God waits not for perfect 
conditions, but breaks forth into forms of weak- 
ness and deformity in the natural world, so 
the amazing love of God does not wait for per- 
fect spiritual conditions, but puts forth its 
beneficent activities, resulting in a prodigal 



54 Love Enthroned. 

wastefulness in its wayside sowings, in its 
stony ground crop, which makes no show in 
the bushel, and in its thorny ground harvest 
which sends no sheaf to the garner. Where 
faith in Christ Jesus is weak, a feeble spiritual 
life is the inevitable result. But when faith 
grasps him as an omnipotent Saviour, the ut- 
termost salvation from sin is the consequence, 
and Christian manhood walks forth upon the 
earth in the stature of the fullness of Christ. 
A-ll spiritual transformations result from the 
combination of two forces, the Divine and the 
human. Where the human is defective the 
resultant will be imperfect, for the Divine 
agency will not compensate the defects of the 
human co-operation. Hence the weakness of 
man is reflected upon the almightiness of God. 
Sons are born into his family having still the 
taint of depravity lurking in their blood, to be 
purged away by the cathartic of a mighty 
faith in the all-cleansing blood of " the Lamb 
of God, that taketh away the sin of the world." 



Full Salvation Immediately Attainable. 55 



CHAPTER IV. 

FULL SALVATION IMMEDIATELY ATTAINABLE. 

INHERE is no denial that entire sanctifica- 
tion is necessary to admission to heaven. 
There is in many minds a doubt respecting the 
attainment of perfect purity before death. It 
is thought, so long as the soul and body are 
united, the flesh must in some degree taint 
the spirit. The inherent evil of matter is an 
old error of the Gnostics, borrowed from pagan 
philosophy, and early introduced into Chris- 
tianity as a corrupting element. The Oriental 
philosophers taught that matter is uncreated 
and eternal, containing in it ineradicable evil ; 
that the Creator, or Fashioner, did the best that 
he could with it when he shaped it into the hu- 
man form ; that he was not able, by any proc- 
ess of sublimation or refinement, to expel 
evil entirely from its nature, and that this in- 
herent evil must continue to defile the soul 
immersed in it till death shall dissolve the 
loathed union. Then will the soul be in a con 



56 Love Enthroned. 

dition to be purified, if it is curable, by drifting 
on rivers of fire till the stains are purged away. 
This is Platonism. This is the origin of the 
Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory. Prot- 
estantism has shaken off the fire-purgation, but 
has too extensively retained the death-purga- 
tory. After seventeen hundred years Chris- 
tianity has not wholly emancipated herself 
from this mischievous tenet of a heathen phi- 
losophy. It is our purpose to show that there 
is no evil in matter or in spirit which the blood 
of Christ cannot cleanse, and that neither 
death nor penal fire, but the omnipotent 
Jesus, is the complete purifier of sin-stained 
souls, and that the only instrument he employs 
is the truth, and the only agent is the Holy 
Ghost, the Sanctifier. Our proofs will be 
wholly scriptural and experimental. The point 
to be demonstrated is this : Can Jesus save 
from all sin, actual and indwelling, long before 
death ? The declaration of the angel to Jo- 
seph, " Thou shalt call his name JESUS ; for 
he shall save his people from their sins," does 
not explicitly declare when this salvation will 
be accomplished. But the implication is that 
he is to be a present Saviour, just as a physi- 



Full Salvation Immediately Attainable. 57 

cian advertising himself as a healer of cancers is 
understood to heal patients now, not in future 
years, nor a few hours before death. It is for- 
tunate, yea, providential, that we have an in- 
spired comment on this name by Zacharias 
when " filled with the Holy Ghost." With 
prophetic vision he saw the immediate advent 
of Jesus, of whom his son John, then eight 
days old, was to be the forerunner. 

" Blessed be the Lord God of Israel ; for he 
hath visited and redeemed his people, and 
hath raised up a horn of salvation for us in 
the house of David. . . . That he would grant 
unto us, that we, being delivered out of the 
hand of our (spiritual) enemies, might serve 
him without fear, (and hence with perfect 
love,) in holiness and righteousness before him, 
(not fulfilling any mere human standard,) ALL 
the days OF OUR LIFE." The deliverance 
was to be spiritual, and not an emancipation 
from the Roman power ; and the result, a glad 
and holy service, was to ensue in this life. No 
language could be used to express such an 
idea more clearly than this. A still more ex- 
plicit statement of the same great privilege oi 
believers is found in St. Paul's brief prayer in 



$8 Love Enthroned. 

i Thess. v, 23. He had just been enjoining 
duties which none but those who are fully 
saved could possibly perform : " Rejoice ever- 
more. Pray without ceasing. In every thing 
give thanks." John Wesley says, " I know no 
higher Christian perfection than this." To en- 
able them to obey these injunctions, and an- 
other just as difficult — " abstain from all ap- 
pearance (every kind) of evil " — he offers this 
prayer : " But may the God of peace himself 
sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit, 
soul, and body, be preserved entire without 
blame, in the coming of the Lord Jesus." * 

So intent is the great Apostle on giving an 
adequate and explicit expression of his mean- 
ing, entire sanctijication, that he uses a strong 
word found nowhere else in the New Tes- 
tament — dkoreXeXg, wholly, rendered in the 
Vulgate per omnia — " in your collective pow- 
ers and parts," marking more emphatically 
than any ordinary New Testament word the 
thoroughness and pervasive nature of the holi- 
ness prayed for. Luther has very happily 
translated it " durch und durch" — through and 
through. Then St. Paul has used another 

* Ellicott's Translation. 



Full Salvation Immediately Attainable. 59 

peculiar term, which is found in only one other 
place in the New Testament, in James i, 4, 
and gives it the position of an emphatic pred- 
icate : " May your spirit be preserved entire, 
your soul entire, and your body entire" He 
ordinarily employs the word reXetog, "perfect" 
when he marks what has reached its proper 
end and maturity. But wishing to express a 
quantitative, and not a qualitative, meaning, he 
employs a term signifying " entire in all its 
parts," " complete," lacking nothing. Having 
in these strong and remarkable words indi- 
cated the thoroughness of the sanctification, 
Paul leaves us in no doubt as to the time, 
when he adds, " and preserve you without 
blame in the coming of the Lord Jesus." 
Through what period of time is the preserva- 
tion to extend ? Till the second advent of 
Christ. This period covers the life-time of 
these Thessalonians, and the space between 
their death and resurrection. To say that the 
prayer refers to the latter period is to involve 
St. Paul in the papal heresy of praying for the 
dead. Therefore the preservation which is to 
follow the entire sanctification can refer only 
to the present life up to the hour of death. So 



6o Love Enthroned. 

plainly is this true, that no polemical writer 
has ventured to twist this passage into any 
other meaning. The entire sanctification here 
supplicated is nor only in this life, but the pe- 
culiar phraseology of the prayer implies that 
it is an instantaneous work. To the objection 
that the verb dyidoai, sanctify, can here only be 
understood of the gradual spread of the princi- 
ple of holiness implanted in regeneration ; even 
Olshausen insists that the emphasis laid on 
the " very God," or " the God of peace him- 
self," " shows that something new is to fol- 
low," some vigorous interposition of the om- 
nipotent arm of the Sanctifier. Besides this, 
the verb is in the aorist tense, denoting a sin- 
gle momentary act. 

Before taking our leave of this wonderful 
Scripture we call attention to the fact, that it 
effectually refutes the Gnostic error respecting 
the inherent evil of matter. In the enumera- 
tion of the constituent elements of man which 
are to be sanctified wholly, and preserved each 
entire, we find " body," o&fia, which is wholly 
material. St. Paul knew of nothing in man 
which was incapable of receiving the efficacy 
of the cleansing blood of Christ. And lest 



Full Salvation Immediately Attainable. 61 

there should be any room for cavil, he speci- 
fies the V ,t % 7 7> the lower or animal " soul," in 
which inhere those passions and desires pos- 
sessed by man in common with the brutes. 
This border land between pure spirit on one 
side and gross matter on the other, lies open 
to the great Purifier as well as the higher ele- 
ment of spirit, Trvevna, the designed receptacle 
or temple for the abode of God in man. In 
the Epistle to the Hebrews the Apostle's closet 
door gets ajar again, and we hear these words 
breathed into the ear of God — so much like 
those just quoted as to indicate the same 
pleader : " Now the God of peace, that brought 
again from the dead our Lord Jesus, through 
the blood of the everlasting covenant,* that 
great Shepherd of the sheep, make you perfect 
in every good work to do his will." This must 
be before death, for good works must be in 
time. To be perfect in them is to exclude 
every evil work, that is, all sin. 

2. Every Scripture in which we are exhorted 
to bring forth those virtues and graces called 
the fruit of the Spirit, must refer to this life. 

* The order of clauses in the Greek teaches that Jesus w** 
raised through the blood of the everlasting covenant. 



62 Love Enthroned. 

If these are required in perfection, as they 
certainly are, they must exclude their oppo- 
sites. Perfect love supposes the extirpation 
of every antagonistic affection ; perfect meek- 
ness, all unholy anger ; and thus with all the 
other graces. 

3. We argue again, that entire holiness is 
attainable in this life, because all the com- 
mands to be holy must refer to the present. 
Grammarians tell us that all imperatives are 
in the present tense. If they cover the future 
they include the indivisible now. " Be ye 
holy," plainly requires present holiness. " Be 
ye perfect," enjoins perfection to-day. "Thou 
shalt love the Lord with all thy heart," is a 
command enforcing perfect love to-day, if it 
means any thing. 

4. The promises of sanctifying grace are 
available to believers now, or they are worth- 
less. For true faith can be exercised for spir- 
itual grace for ourselves only as it rests on the 
promise which includes the present moment. 
" Knowing this, that the body of sin might be 
destroyed, that henceforth, viz should not serve 
sin." This promise of the destruction of sin 
begins now, and is followed by a glorious 



Full Salvation Immediately Attainable. 63 

henceforth of emancipation this side of death 
Let the reader study the following promises, 
and observe how manifestly they imply pres- 
ent fulfillment: Isa. i, 18, 25; Titus ii, 14; 
1 John i, 9; iv, 16-18. Let him also remem- 
ber that every command to be holy covers 
the present, and contains an implied promise 
of the aid of the Sanctifier. 

5. It remains to examine one Scripture in 
which it is asserted that our evangelical per- 
fection is in express terms deferred to some 
future time, namely, 1 Peter v, 10: "But the 
God of all grace, who hath called us unto his 
eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye 
have suffered a while, make you perfect, stab- 
lish, strengthen, settle you. ,, Some tell us 
that the adverbial clause, " after ye have suf- 
fered a while," modifies the following verb, 
" perfect." Let us read it in this way, and 
we will find that the poor souls for whom 
Peter prays cannot claim to be " stablished " 
now, nor strengthened now, nor settled now; 
but they must be tossed about in weakness 
and instability till after they have " suffered 
awhile." This is certainly contrary to the 
uniform promise of God to help in time of 



64 Love Enthroned. 

need. We need the most help when we suffer, 
Then again, the soul deserted of God for a while 
is anxious to know the length of this indefi- 
nite "awhile." How long a time must elapse 
before I can claim by faith the strengthening 
grace here supplicated? It is evident that 
the four verbs " perfect," " stablish," " strength- 
en," and "settle," are all in the same grammati- 
cal construction. If we must wait a while to 
be perfected, we must also wait in suffering to 
be strengthened. But now suppose that, with 
the best biblical scholar of the century, Dean 
Alford, we attach the adverbial clause to the 
verb " hath called," what will be the render- 
ing then ? " But the God of all grace, who 
called you unto his eternal glory (heaven, not 
now, but) when ye have suffered a little while, 
himself perfect you (now,) stablish," etc. This 
rendering is simple and clear. It obviates all 
the difficulties of the other rendering, and 
makes God a present help in our extremity. 
The sufferings must be passed before the glory 
can be entered. They are the condition of the 
reward. This is all that St. Peter intended 
by the clause in dispute. As God is ready to 
pardon now every sinner on the earth who 



Full Salvation Immediately Attainable. 65 

comes in penitence and faith in Jesus, so is 
this Almighty Saviour able and willing, at the 
present moment, to cleanse and endow with 
the fullness of the Holy Spirit every believer 
who honors Christ by a trust in his promise 
of the abiding Comforter. So intense is his 
abhorrence of sin that he longs to wipe out 
the last spot that defiles humanity. 

6. The experimental evidence that the 
blood of Christ avails to the complete cleans- 
ing of the believer before death would fill 
many volumes. We give the first that comes 
to hand. 

" A few years ago the wife of a distinguished 
minister was lying hopelessly ill. All was 
mist and uncertainty before her. She longed 
for the purity and peace promised in the holy 
word, but her husband had always preached 
a gradual growth in grace, and completeness 
in Christ only at the last moment of life, and 
she waited for that hour in dread uncertainty. 

" ' O, that I could have complete deliverance 
from sin now, before that fearful hour ! ' she 
exclaimed. 

" ' Why not now ? ' the Spirit suggested. 

" She sent for her husband, and as he en- 



66 Love Enthroned. 

tered her sick-chamber, she anxiously inquired, 
1 Can Christ save me from all sin ? ' 

" ' Yes ; he's an almighty Saviour, your Sav- 
iour, able to save to the uttermost.' 

" ' When can he save me ? You have often 
said that he saves from all sin at the dying 
moment. If he is almighty, don't you think 
he could save me a few minutes before death ? 
It would take the sting of death away to know 
that I am saved.' 

" ' Yes, I think he could.' 

" ' Well, if he could save me a few minutes 
before death, don't you believe it possible for 
him to save a few hours or a day before 
death?' The husband bowed his assent. 
' But,' she said with deep earnestness, ' I may 
live a week, or a month ; do you think it pos- 
sible for God to save a soul* from all sin so 
long before death ? ' 

" ' Yes ; all things are possible with God,' 
he answered with deep emotion. 

" 'Then kneel right down here and pray for 
me. I want this full salvation now, and if I 
live a month, I will live to praise God.' 

" He knelt beside her bed, and poured out 
his soul to God in prayer as he had ncvQr 



Full Salvation Immediately Attainable, 67 

done before. And while he prayed, the cleans- 
ing blood that makes whiter than snow was 
applied to her soul, and she was enabled to re- 
joice with a joy unspeakable and full of glory. 
She lived a month afterward to magnify the 
grace of God, and testify of the perfect love 
that casteth out all fear. And since that hour 
her husband has preached Christ as a present 
Saviour, able to save from all sin." * 

The following experience of a Presbyte- 
rian preacher's wife who still lives, and testi- 
fies on both continents to the cleansing blood 
of Jesus Christ purifying her from all sin years 
after conversion, meets the objection urged by 
some that those experiencing entire sanctifica- 
tion are only just then converted or reclaimed 
from a backslidden state : — 

" When I was converted my conversion was 
so marked, so clear, so decided, that I never 
could have a doubt of it. I went on for three 
years in the ordinary Christian way, (some- 
times gaining a little, perhaps, but at other 
times defeated,) battling against my besetting 
sins — against pride and ambition, against im- 
patience and irritability, against worrying 

* " The Jeweled Ministry." 



68 Love Enthroned. 

about the future, and about the petty things 
of life. 

" But at the end of three years I was taught 
a very different way from that of making reso- 
lutions, and struggling into the Divine life, 
and battling down my ambition, and pride, 
and levity, and all those things which tor- 
mented me. I found that Jesus Christ would 
do all that work for me. After I learned this, 
my life was changed. O, how changed it was! 
How calm and serene it became ! There was 
such a resting on Jesus! He seemed to be 
with me every day, and all the time ; and I 
looked to him to keep me from pride and am- 
bition, and from the worriments of life, and 
from anxiety about the future, and I found 
that he did that work for me. He did it all 
the time. He is the Conqueror of sin. If we 
leave ourselves in his hands he does for us 
what we cannot do for ourselves." 

A widely-known deaconess, in evangelical 
labors most abundant, testifies to a steady 
growth up to the time when the love of Christ 
was made perfect in her heart by the fullness 
of the Holy Ghost : — 

" For years I worked and worked to get the 



Full Salvation Immediately Attainable. 69 

Christian graces, and fit myself for salvation 
by Christ. And O, how hard that was ! But 
then it was a great deal easier than to submit 
to Jesus. My heart chafed and found no rest 
until I was willing to accept the words of 
Christ when he said to me, " Your heart is de- 
ceitful and desperately wicked/' and at the 
same time to accept his words when he said, 
" I will save you," and to trust in him. After 
that, doubts went from me, and there seemed 
to be a full resting in the righteousness of 
Christ, in his merits, in his atonement. There 
was no rest in myself, in my experiences, or 
aught else besides simply resting upon Christ 
to save me eternally, and accepting his prom- 
ises to be with me every-where and every day, 
and to guide me in all things. In this there 
was peace and joy to my soul. 

" All that I can think of by which to illus- 
trate my Christian life is this, that it was like 
sitting in a row-boat and rowing up stream, 
and making progress by severe effort ; until, 
by and by, there comes a steamer along, and 
the weary toiler is asked if he will rot have 
a ride, and he steps on board, and makes the 
remainder of the voyage easily and pleasantly. 



70 Love Enthroned. 

It seemed at first that the Christian work was 
hard and wearying, but after that it was God 
doing the work in me, God pushing me on, 
God leading me, God guiding. And now it is 
easy — easy in the family, with the little ones, 
every-where. For it is love — the love of God 
—that is working. The soul is filled with 
love. And O, how love will go anywhere, and 
count no cost, and keep no record of what it 
does ! There is no burden at all about living 
for a loved object. It is perfect freedom. " 

We have not space for the clear testimonies 
of Madam Guyon, Catharine Adorna, Monsieur 
De Renty, John and Mary Fletcher, Hester 
Ann Rogers, Bramwell, Carvosso, Adam Clarke, 
J. B. Taylor, Wilbur Fisk, Olin, Hamline, Alfred 
Cookman, and a host of others, whose biogra- 
phies are a precious legacy to the Christian 
world, and a directory to all who are seeking 
to find the highway of holiness. 



Bible Texts for Sin Examined. Ji 



CHAPTER V, 

BIBLE TEXTS FOR SIN EXAMINED. 

MUCH of the controversy about sin re- 
sults from the want of accuracy in the 
definition of this term. We do not in this 
chapter include in sin the involuntary devia- 
. . tions from the law of absolute right, but willful 
transgressions of the known law of God, writ- 
ten in his word or on the tables of the heart, 
and also original or inbred sin. 

Living without sin are words which shock 
many persons. It seems to them to be pluck- 
ing the crown from the head of Christ, the 
only sinless man who ever walked the earth, 
and putting that crown upon the heads of 
men. But let us see whether sin in the human 
soul really honors or dishonors Christ. What 
was the great errand of Jesus into the world ? 
To save his people from their sins. So far, 
then, as he does not save from sin, his mission 
is a dishonorable failure. He came to create 
the believer anew, making him a new creature. 



12 Love Enthroned. 

So much of the old man of sin as appears to 
stain and corrupt this new creature reflects 

discredit upon " Him that begetteth." " Ye 

• 

are his workmanship." The work testifies of 
the skill or of the incompetency of the artist. 
Will any one insist that sin is a beauty and 
not a blemish in the work of the Divine 
Sculptor? In his prayer, which has been ap- 
propriately styled his high-priestly address to 
his Father, Jesus says respecting his disciples. 
" I am glorified in them/' Does Christ's glory 
consist in sin, reflected from his followers? 
St. John said of the Logos, who became flesh 
and dwelt among us, that we beheld his glo- 
ry — not a material resplendence, not worldly 
wealth, nor rank, nor fame, nor genius, but 
moral excellence, fullness of " grace and truth/ 1 
These qualities in believing hearts glorify 
Christ. Sin is not only a shame to any people, 
but a shame to the God of any people. Jesus, 
therefore, is not jealous of the believer who, 
through the power of his grace, has complete 
victory over inward sin, and perfect cleans- 
ing from outward defilement, but he rejoices 
in the honor which his perfect work reflects 
upon his workmanship. He is not afraid that 



Bible Texts for Sin Examined. 73 

he who wears the robe of his righteousness will 
outshine himself, and appropriate his honors. 
Sin might do this, but holiness never. 

But is not sin in the heart necessary to keep 
the soul humble? Will not spiritual pride lift 
itself up as soon as sin is destroyed ? As well 
might you ask whether a man would not lift 
up his head haughtily when his neck has been 
broken. The Holy Spirit, taking complete pos- 
session of the heart, not only breaks the neck 
of sin, but casts out this strong man, leaving 
no seed of pride behind. Perfect love to Christ 
is perfect lowliness. When it is demonstrated 
that men must drink a little whisky daily in 
order to temperance, — steal a trifling amount 
every day in order to be honest, — tell a few 
fibs every twenty-four hours in order to be 
truthful, — and occasionally violate the seventh 
commandment that they may maintain their 
purity, — then we will sit down and soberly an- 
swer the objection that a little nest-egg of sin 
in the heart is a necessary nucleus about 
which all the Christian virtues are to be gath- 
ered. But does not the Bible flatly contradict 
this doctrine, that the freedom which Jesus, the 
great Emancipator, bestows, includes grace 



74 Love Enthroned. 

to live without sinning? Did not Solomon, 
in prayer at the dedication of the temple, 
(2 Chron. vi, 36,) tell Jehovah that " there is 
no man which sinneth not?" And does he 
not repeat this declaration in Eccles. vii, 20, 
" For there is not a just man on earth that 
doeth good and sinneth not?" We answer 
that Solomon, when correctly interpreted, as 
he is in the Vulgate, the Septuagint, and most 
of the ancient versions, gives no countenance 
to sin. These all read, "May not sin" The 
Hebrew language, having no potential mode, 
uses the indicative future instead. The con- 
text must determine the real meaning. The 
context is nonsense in King James* version, 
using an if where there is no room for a 
condition — "if any man sin, for every man 
sins." Let me illustrate the absurdity of this 
translation. 

At the laying of a corner-stone of a State 
lunatic asylum the Governor, in his address, 
is made by the reporter to say, " If any 
person in the commonwealth is msane — for 
every person is insane — let him come here 
and be cared for." We should all correct the 
blundering reporter, and say, may become in- 



Bible Texts for Sin Examined. 75 

sane, instead of is insane, in order to make the 
Governor talk sense. Correct the reporter, or 
translator, rather, of Solomon, and let him 
talk sense also, and you will hear him say, 
If any man sin, for there is no one who is im- 
peccable, who may not sin. This criticism 
applies to the quotation from the Eccle- 
siastes, also. But does not St. James say, 
(iii, 2,) " For in many things we offend all ? M 
Who are the we? Is it St. James and the 
rest of the apostles? Then these excellent 
men, after blessing God, fall to cursing men. 
See ninth verse. But if the we is used for 
men generally, the difficulty vanishes. That 
it is so used read the entire verse, and note 
the exception to the general offending, " If 
any man offend not in word, the same is a 
perfect man." But the plea for continuing 
in sin has one more proof-text, (1 John i, 8,) 
" If we say that we have no sin, we deceive 
ourselves, and the truth is not in us." This 
means if we have never sinned, and so have 
no need of the blood of Jesus Christ, spoken 
of in the previous verse. The tenth verse 
reiterates and explains the eighth : " If we 
say that we have not sinned, we make him a 



76 Love Enthroned. 

liar, and his word is not in us." This explana- 
tion harmonizes perfectly with John's strong 
assertion, that " whosoever is born of God 
doth not commit sin," that is, known and will* 
ful sin. The incorrect interpretation of the 
eighth verse, which makes every believer in 
Christ a constant sinner, is in direct collision 
with the asserted victory over sin, enjoyed by 
every one born of God. 

After this removal of misconceptions arising 
from misinterpreted Scriptures, we proceed to 
demonstrate the same doctrine of a complete 
deliverance from sin, by referring the reader to 
those passages which enjoin on the believer the 
possession of the fullness of the Divine love, 
and the fullness of the Spirit. We would call 
especial attention to the wonderful prayer of 
St. Paul in Ephesians iii, 14. An analysis of this 
prayer will find no negative petition in it. No 
allusion to sin, actual or indwelling, occurs; 
but the eye of the Apostle sees only the posi- 
tive blessing — the fullness of God. This is 
utterly inconsistent with the existence of sin 
in the soul. Paul's logical mind would have 
seen the impropriety of such a prayer for sin- 
ners. For such he would have entreated God 



Bible Texts for Sin Examined. J J 

for pardon, and for cleansing by the washing 
of regeneration, and by the renewing of the 
Holy Ghost. But finding them thus cleansed, 
as empty vessels before the Lord, he prays 
that they may be filled with all the fullness 
of God. 

This subject would not be complete without 
an examination of that fancied magna charta 
for the necessary existence of sin in the Chris- 
tian heart prompting to sinful acts, namely, the 
seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. 
Does St. Paul here portray the Christian at 
his best earthly estate ? Does he hold up his 
own moral photograph? To both of these 
queries we answer, No. St. Paul formed his 
style in the synagogue debates. " This ex- 
plains the eminently dialogic character of 
the style. The ever-recurring second person, 
often the second person singular, shows us his 
co-disputant ever in his presence. By this 
the train of thought is varied and controlled 
into often unexpected and abrupt transitions. 
Objections, sometimes in the opponent's own 
words, sometimes put for him in St. Paul's 
words, are rapidly presented and rapidly over- 
ridden. " 



78 Love Enthroned. 

This being true, it requires great care to as- 
certain the character speaking — whether the 
author is speaking for himself, or personating 
another. It is a very significant fact that for 
the first three centuries the entire Christian 
Church, with one accord, applied the picture of 
the vanquished and despairing slave described 
in Rom. vii, 13-25, solely to the unregenerate 
man. " It seemed too low a picture for the 
possessor of a new Christian life, as the Apos- 
tle in the main current of thought is describ- 
ing. Its application to the regenerate man 
was first invented by Augustine, who was fol- 
lowed by many eminent doctors of the Middle 
Ages. After the Reformation the interpreta- 
tion of Augustine was largely adopted, espe- 
cially by the followers of Calvin. At the 
present day the Church generally, Greek, Ro- 
man, Protestant, including some of the latest 
commentators, have returned to the just inter- 
pretation as held by the primitive Church." 
— Dr. Whedon. An examination of the pre- 
ceding and succeeding passages will amply 
justify our conclusion that a regenerate soul 
nevei sat for this dark, sad portrait. This was 
never designed to depict the ideal Christian life, 



Bible Texts for Sin Examined. 79 

but is rather the portrayal of the struggles of 
. a convicted sinner seeking justification by the 
works of the law. The ideal Christian life is 
found in the sixth chapter : " But now being 
made free from sin, and become servants to 
God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the 
end everlasting life ; " also in the eighth chap- 
ter: "There is therefore now no condemna- 
tion to them which are in Christ Jesus, who 
walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." 
As the skillful painter puts a dark background 
when he wishes to make the central figure in 
the front more radiant, so St. Paul sets off the 
believer delivered from sin by holding up be- 
side him the dark contrast of a convicted legal- 
ist vainly seeking justification by his good 
works. How sad the blunder of mistaking the 
profile of the sinner for the saint, and hanging 
it up for imitation by the body of believers. 

We are confident in our conclusion that the 
Holy Scriptures nowhere apologize for sin, or 
in the least license it or extenuate its existence 
in the universe. To assert that the holy God 
has made sin necessary under the reign of 
grace is to slander the Father, and pronounce 
the redemptive plan a stupendous failure. 



8o Love Enthroned. 



CHAPTER VI. 

DELIVERANCE DEFERRED. 

HAVING shown that Christ proposes to 
free the believer in this world not only 
from acts of sin, but from the sinful disposition 
inherent in fallen humanity, we proceed to 
enumerate certain ills which are the effects of 
sin, and wear its appearance, but have not its 
moral character, and are not in the catalogue 
of things from which Jesus promises us deliv- 
erance in the present life. These are, — 

First. Spiritual warfare. This implies temp- 
tations. Jesus warred with temptations. " As 
he is, so are ye in this world." " The disciple 
is not above his Lord." The Christian life is 
a long battle, for which we are to draw arms 
from the arsenal of Christ's promised presence 
and from the power of his word, and from the 
endowment of his Holy Spirit. But we do as- 
sert that we may be delivered from the most 
distressing and perilous form of war — a civil 
war ; a confederacy against Christ raging in 



Deliverance Deferred. 8 1 

every believer's bosom. This civil war is 
disquieting the souls of many who have ac- 
cepted Christ with a feeble faith. They are 
living in the seventh chapter of the Epistle to 
the Romans. This, as we proved in the last 
chapter, was never designed to be the ideal 
Christian life, but is rather the portrayal of the 
struggles of a convicted sinner seeking justifi- 
cation by the works of the law. The ideal 
Christian life is found in the sixth chapter — 
" But being now made free from sin, and be- 
come servants of God, ye have your fruit unto 
holiness, and the end everlasting life ; " also 
in the eighth chapter : " There is therefore 
now no condemnation to them which are in 
Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but 
after the Spirit. " An objector here queries 
whether the flesh, one of the triad of foes to 
the soul trusting in Jesus Christ, is not an in- 
ward foe, a traitor within the citadel. Cer- 
tainly it is such a foe in the first part of the 
spiritual campaign. But the promise is, " Ye 
shall be cleansed from all filthiness of the flesh 
and spirit." The commandment is, " Crucify 
the flesh with its affections and lusts." The 

ideal Christian life in the eighth of Romans is 
6 



82 Love Enthroned. 

of this kind. It is a death unto sin, so that he 
who fully apprehends Christ, the life, is as free 
from the movements of sin within him as the 
corpses in yonder grave-yard are free from 
the cares which bustle at midday through 
the market-place. " If ye do mortify the 
deeds of the body, ye shall live." To mortify 
is to slay. The Gospel contemplates the ex- 
tirpation of all antagonisms to Christ within 
the believing soul. But does not St. Paul say, 
" I keep my body under, and bring it into sub- 
jection, lest, after having preached the Gospel 
to others I should become a castaway ! " Christ 
would not bless, but curse us, if he should free 
us from the innocent appetites which our Crea- 
tor has implanted in us for the preservation 
of the individual and of the race. These blind 
and instinctive impulses must be controlled by 
reason and conscience. Neither St. Paul nor 
any other saint was so holy that his hands 
would instinctively drop his knife and fork the 
instant he had eaten exactly enough, without 
the intervention of the will directed by the judg- 
ment. Christ does not propose to emancipate 
any person from the necessity of exercising his 
judgment in regard to his innocent appetites. 



Deliverance Deferred. 83 

Second. Christ has not promised to deliver 
us, in the present life, from infirmities. So long 
as we abide in houses of clay we shall be hum- 
bled by their presence. I do not say that we 
shall be under a sense of condemnation in con- 
sequence of them. So long as we are in this 
tabernacle we shall groan for deliverance from 
these involuntary failures and weaknesses. 
They need the blood of sprinkling. Hence the 
holiest person on earth is not beyond saying 
daily, " Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our 
debtors." But you inquire, What is the nature 
of those infirmities from which we are to expect 
no release in the present life ? They are the 
scars of sin : the wounds have been healed. 
As in the kingdom of nature, so in the king- 
dom of grace, there is no medicine to remove 
the scars of wounds, none efficacious in the 
present life. You may mend a pitcher by the 
application of cement, so that it will hold 
water ; but when you strike it there is no ring. 
To regain the ring of a perfect vessel, you 
must hand it over to the potter to be ground 
to powder and to be reconstructed. So it is 
with us in the present life. Jesus, if we will 
submit our shattered vessels to him, can mend 



84 Love Enthroned. 

us up so that we may be filled with the Spirit, 
but we shall not on earth regain the true 
Adamic ring of absolute perfection. We must 
be handed over to death to be reduced to dust 
and be built up again by the Divine Potter, 
when we shall be presented faultless, not in 
the obscure twilight of some distant region, 
but faultless in the meridian splendors " of the 
presence of his glory." 

As instances of invincible infirmities we would 
mention lack of knowledge in respect to sub- 
jects upon which we must act ; hence errors of 
judgment, paving the way for errors in practice. 

Defective memory is another infirmity which 
even the fullness of sanctifying giace does not 
remove. It was not designed to restore the 
intellectual powers in the present life to unde- 
caying vigor. It quickens the dead spiritual 
nature, and reinforces conscience. A fallible 
judgment will be ours even when love to 
Christ has been perfected. 

Hours of apathy and spiritual dullness by 
reason of our bodily organism or the state of the 
nerves. We cannot always prevent these states. 
Christ does not promise to work a miracle to 
keep us awake and aflame with zeal, in an at- 



Deliverance Deferred. 85 

mosphere deprived of its oxygen by the care- 
lessness of the sexton. 

Third. We should be happy to inform mill- 
ions of groaning saints that there is attainable 
in the present life a state of love to Christ so 
strong as to exclude every wandering thought 
in prayer. John Wesley, in his younger days, 
declared that such a state could be reached 
by saints in the flesh. He lived to see his 
error, and to confess it in his sermon on Wan- 
dering Thoughts. This was written to correct 
a practical error into which some were run- 
ning, of seeking the sanctification of the mind 
as distinct from the heart. These persons 
believed, that by the power of the Holy Spirit 
the succession of the thoughts could be so 
controlled as to shut out every improper or 
wandering thought, and that the mind could 
be stayed upon God in such a way that no dis- 
tracting thought could intrude. Wesley saw 
that this was putting the work of entire sanc- 
tification so high as to render it unattainable, 
and that the advocacy of this extreme view 
was doing great damage to the precious doc- 
trine of perfect love, which is far different 
from perfect thi?iking. 



S6 Love Enthroned. 

To all who are in distress on this account 
we commend the entire sermon. The philos- 
ophy of this whole subject lies in a few words. 
The work of the Divine Spirit is chiefly, if not 
wholly, comprised in a rectification of the will. 
Says Mr. Fletcher, " Christian perfection ex- 
tends chiefly to the will, which is the capital 
moral power of the soul ; leaving the under- 
standing ignorant of ten thousand things. 
Adamic perfection extended to the whole 
man." The succession of ideas is independent 
of the will, and hence it is not the province 
of grace to prevent wandering thoughts. It 
may partially cure the evil by drawing the 
soul toward Christ as toward a great magnet, 
so that the tendency of even our random 
thoughts may be toward him. 

Fourth. I nowhere find an assuiance that 
the soul believing in Christ will be delivered 
from all unpleasant and improper dreams. We 
desire this state of religious experience, and 
we express our aspiration in song: — 

" Yet in my dreams I'd be 
Nearer, my God, to thee." 

We must here disagree with President Ed- 
wards, who tells Christians to scrutinize their 



Deliverance Deferred. 87 

dreams in order to ascertain their real char- 
acter and standing before God. So far as my 
observation goes, there is no law in our dreams 
but the law of contraries. The most peace- 
able, quarrel ; the most gentle and tender, com- 
mit murder ; the most contented with life, plot 
suicide ; the temperate, become drunken ; and 
the pure, become impure. These conceptions, 
resulting from the day's employment, the state 
of the digestion, the quantity of bedding, and 
a thousand other causes, give no more indica- 
tion of the moral and spiritual condition than 
they do of the person's ancestral pedigree. 

Fifth. Nor do we look for salvation from 
sudden trepidation- when any thing startling 
occurs, like the crash of a thunderbolt or the 
presentation of a telegraphic dispatch from 
the absent family. All this is instinctive. As 
there is no sin in instinctive actions, so there 
is in them no ground of condemnation. An 
eminent Christian woman received a dispatch 
from her husband a thousand miles away, and 
then apologized to me, and asked forgiveness 
of God, for the dishonor she had done to the 
cause of Christ by the emotion which her trem- 
bling hand indicated when the dispatch was 



88 Love Enthroned. 

suddenly thrust before her eye. The apology 
and prayer were both needless, for there was 
no sin in this sudden agitation. The Saviour, 
for wise reasons, defers our deliverance from 
these till our feet touch the other shore; and 
yet, we are commanded with Abraham " to 
walk before God and be perfect. " 

Sixth. Nor does Jesus, the great Emanci- 
pator, deliver us from the unpleasant feeling 
of our insufficiency in our labors in his vine- 
yard. We do not accomplish a thousandth 
part of what we desire to do. Fields lie waste 
all around us. The good seed we scatter is 
largely wasted ; it brings little fruit to perfec- 
tion. When we contemplate these facts, the 
thought suggests itself that if we were just 
right, perfectly guided by the Spirit of truth, 
we should engage in no abortive labors ; 
every stroke would tell for the kingdom of 
Christ ; every word of exhortation or of in- 
struction would accomplish its exact purpose, 
like the word of the Lord " which returneth 
not unto him void!" We have recently heard 
persons testify to such a fullness and guidance 
of the Spirit that every effort to do good to 
others is successful, the Spirit directing, infalli- 



Deliverance Deferred. 89 

bly, to the susceptible persons, and suggesting 
the exact words needed for their deliverance. 
But there must be some mistake in this mat- 
ter. We find no instance of this in the Holy 
Scriptures. The holiest men are afflicted with 
a sense of failure in their labors. Sinners were 
hardened under the preaching of St. Paul. 
His failure to save his brethren of the Hebrew 
nation produced the profoundest sorrow, so 
that he could wish himself " accursed from 
Christ ; " that is, that he could make an atone- 
ment in addition to Christ's, to secure their 
salvation. Jesus himself, when he gazed from 
Olivet upon the rebellious city soon to be des- 
olated by the judgments of God, and cried " O 
Jerusalem, Jerusalem !" keenly felt the failure 
of his ministry. If we correctly interpret the 
language of God the Father, we must under- 
stand that even his absolute perfections do 
not exclude a painful sense of failure in his 
unsuccessful attempts to save free agents who 
pervert their godlike attribute of freedom by 
rejecting his mercy: "I have nourished and 
brought up children, and they have rebelled 
against me." He "willeth not the death of 
the wicked, but rather that they would turn 



go Love Enthroned. 

and live : Turn ye, turn ye." Therefore we 
do not teach the possibility of freedom from 
this sense of inefficiency in the present life. 
It is an element of our probation, one of the 
highest tests of faith, to toil for God when we 
see no fruit, to sow for others to reap, or for 
the birds to snatch away, or the thorns to choke 
Was not this the bitter ingredient in that cup 
which made the Son of God a man of sorrows ? 
Seventh. Christ will not free us from death, 
nor from ills and diseases, the sappers and 
miners of the king of terrors. All these shall 
be put beneath the Conqueror's feet, but not 
now. "The last enemy that shall be destroyed 
is death." Nevertheless, when the gift of faith 
is bestowed as a charism, not a grace, the sick 
even in our day may be healed, and death 
itself may be postponed, in answer to prayer, 
as in the case of Hezekiah. I Cor. xii, 9; 
James v, 15. 



Metaphorical Representations. 91 



CHAPTER VII. 

METAPHORICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF PER- 
FECT LOVE. 

§ 1. The Dove Descending and Abiding. 

MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, 
in her admirable essay on " Primitive 
Christian Experience," uses the following lan- 
guage : — 

" The advantages to the Christian Church, 
in setting before it distinct points of attainment, 
are very nearly the same in result as the ad- 
vantages of preaching immediate regeneration 
in preference to indefinite exhortation to men 
to lead sober, righteous, and godly lives. It 
has been found, in the course of New England 
preaching, that pressing men to an immediate 
and definite point of conversion, produced im- 
mediate and definite results ; and so it has 
been found among Christians, that pressing 
them to an immediate and definite point of 
attainment will, in like manner, result in 
marked and decided progress. For this rea- 



92 Love Enthroned. 

son it is, that, among the Moravian Christians, 
where the experience by them denominated 
full assurance of faith was much insisted on, 
there were more instances of high religious 
faith than in almost any other denomination." 

Here is sound philosophy, founded on facts 
corroborated by Mr. Wesley in his wide range 
of observation : — " Wherever the work of sanc- 
tification increased, the whole work of God in- 
creased in all its branches." In 1765 he found 
in Bristol fifty less members than he left be- 
fore. He thus accounts for this decline : — 
" One reason is, that Christian perfection has 
been little insisted on ; and wherever this is not 
done, be the preacher ever so eloquent, there 
is little increase either in the numbers or grace 
of the hearers." When a definite point is pre- 
sented to the believer as attainable immediate- 
ly, all the energies of the soul are aroused and 
concentrated. Prayer is no more at random. 
There is a target set up to fire at. Faith as 
an act — a voluntary venture upon the promise 
— puts forth its highest energies and achieves 
its greatest victories. 

But just here some people find a difficulty. 
They do not dispute the philosophy, but they 



Metaphorical Representations. 93 

question the fact that to believers there is in 
the New Testament such a distinct p oint, such 
a definite line to be crossed. They say that 
they fail to find in the apostolic Church any 
instance of such a sudden transition in the 
spiritual life of the justified soul. It is said 
that after regeneration there is a gradual de- 
velopment of the new life, with no instanta- 
neous uplifts such as are insisted on by the 
modern apostles of the higher life. It is the 
purpose of this chapter to show not only nu- 
merous instances of an instantaneous uprising 
to a higher plane of Christian experience, but 
that this was the normal development of the 
spiritual life of primitive Christians. We pro- 
ceed to show that the baptism of the Holy 
Ghost is identical with the blessing of perfect 
love. 

St. Paul, in one of his missionary tours, en- 
countered Judaizing teachers who affirmed 
that those who would be good Christians must 
be good Jews, obeying all the Levitical law. 
This question was carried up to Jerusalem to 
be decided by a council of the apostles and 
elders. After much discussion, Peter arose 
and gave an account of his preaching: — "A 



94 Love Enthroned. 

good while ago God made choice among us 
that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear 
the word of the Gospel and believe ; and God, 
which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness^ 
giving them the Holy Ghost even as he did 
unto us ; and put no difference between us and 
them, purifying their hearts by faith." Peter 
refers to his preaching to Cornelius and his 
staff at his headquarters in Cesarea. On an- 
other occasion he declares : " And as I began 
to speak, the Holy Ghost fell on them as on us 
at the beginning ; " that is, on the day of Pen- 
tecost, at the beginning of " the kingdom of 
the Holy Ghost," as John Fletcher styles it. 
The apostles were then filled, which is the 
same as being baptized, with the Holy Ghost, 
for it was the fulfillment of the promise, " But 
ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not 
many days hence." The conclusion is inevi- 
table, that the baptism of the Holy Ghost in- 
cludes the extinction of sin in the believer's 
soul as its negative and minor part, and the 

fullness of love shed abroad in the heart as its 
positive and greater part ; in other words, it 

includes entire sanctification and Christian 

perfection. 



Metaphorical Representations. 95 

Let us more clearly trace the successive 
steps by which we come to this conclusion. 
Christ promised that when he should be glo- 
rified the disciples should receive a blessing 
which they could not receive while his bodily 
presence remained with them. John vii, 38, 39. 
That blessing was not the forgiveness of sins, 
for Jesus was daily dispensing pardon. It was 
a blessing of an abiding and aggressive nature, 
making believers to be as fountains whence 
should flow forth " rivers of living water." Thus 
much is determined by this passage, that there 
is a blessing distinct from pardoning grace, and 
there is an indefinite interval between them. 
It remains now to show that this second bless- 
ing involves entire sanctification. The proofs 
are: 1. The account of the fullness of the Holy 
Spirit on the day of Pentecost, ten days after 
the Lord Jesus ascended to his glorified state. 
Acts i and ii. 2. Peter's declaration (Acts 
xi, 15, 16) that the effusion of the Holy Spirit 
upon Cornelius and his company was the same 
in character and effect as the outpouring at 
the Pentecost. 3. Peter's incidental remark in 
Acts xv, 9, that the Holy Ghost came to Cor- 
nelius and his house in his office of the Sane- 



g6 Love Enthroned. 

tifier, " Purifying their hearts by faith." The 
last text is an incontrovertible demonstration 
that the fullness of the Spirit is a synonym for 
entire sanctification. Since there are but two 
forces which can sway the soul, the flesh and 
the Spirit, to be completely filled with either is 
to exclude the other. To be filled with the 
Spirit is to be completely emancipated from 
the flesh, or inherent depravity. To be but 
partially swayed by the Spirit is to afford a 
foothold in the soul for a contest between 
these antagonistic powers. Gal. v, 17. 

It remains to be proved that Cornelius and 
his staff, or house, whose hearts " were purified 
by faith " in the Spirit baptism, were previous- 
ly in a justified state. We have the testimony 
of the Spirit of inspiration that he was " a de- 
vout man, and one that feared God with all his 
house, (military household,) which gave much 
alms to the people, and prayed always." Peter, 
under the inspiration of the Spirit, and stand- 
ing in the presence of Cornelius and his house, 
asserts, " Of a truth I perceive that God is no 
respecter of persons ; but in every nation he 
that feareth God and worketh righteousness 
is accepted with him " — " through Christ, 



Metaphorical Representations. 97 

though he knew him not," says Wesley most 
truly. To be accepted with God is to be justi- 
fied by God. There was no conviction of sin 
produced under Peter's discourse in Cesarea, 
no account that these pious Gentiles "were 
pricked in their heart," nor was there any out- 
cry, " Men and brethren, what shall we do." 
They were ready to receive the Holy Ghost, 
hence the correctness of the inference made by 
the Council at Jerusalem : " Then hath God 
also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto 
life." Acts xi, 18. The reception of the Holy 
Spirit in his fullness presupposes their previ- 
ous repentance unto life. On the day of Pen- 
tecost so great was the manifestation of spirit- 
ual power that the believers in Christ were 
instantly and completely filled without the 
instrumentality of preaching, and unbelievers 
during the sermon of Peter were rapidly trans- 
formed into penitent believers, ready to sub- 
mit to any test of the genuineness of their 
faith ; even to be publicly baptized in the 
hated name of that Jesus whom they had per- 
sonally insulted and crucified. The finishing 
stroke of this rapid transformation was " the 
gift of the Holy Ghost," with its fruits — un- 



98 Love Enthroned. 

selfishness, oneness of spirit, "gladness and 
singleness of heart." But generally there was 
a brief interval between conversion and the 
baptism of the Spirit. 

The people of Samaria were first converted 
under the preaching of Deacon Philip ; " and 
when they believed, they were baptized, both 
men and women." Having never been brought 
into personal contact with Jesus, and having 
never offered personal insult to him, water 
baptism is not made the test of the sincerity 
of their repentance, so that they were regen- 
erated before that ordinance was used. The 
successive steps through which they passed 
were, attention to the word, faith, great joy — 
implying a change of heart — and baptism with 
water.* Afterward Peter and John were sent 
down from Jerusalem for the special work of 
leading the converts on to Christian perfection. 
They held a special meeting. They prayed 
with them that they might receive the Holy 
Ghost, and they laid their hands upon them, 
and they received the Holy Ghost, not only as 
the giver of special gifts, but also as a distinct 
and permanent spiritual endowment. Says 

* See Ellicott on Eph. i, 13, and Alford on Gal. i, 16. 



Metaphorical Representations. 99 

Dr. Whedon, " They received the Holy Ghost 
in his miraculous and extraordinary manifes- 
tation, not merely sanctifying but charismatic. 
They had doubtless been regenerated by that 
Spirit before their baptism, in his secret and 
ordinary power and operation. " 

The Apostle Paul found at Ephesus " cer- 
tain disciples/' He asked them a question 
which seems greatly out of place if there is no 
distinct work of the Holy Spirit after justifica- 
tion : " Have yo received the Holy Ghost since 
ye believed ? " Acts xix, 2. We admit that 
there is no word " since " in the Greek text, 
and that there may be no allusion to time in 
this passage, which may be rendered : " Have 
ye believing received the Holy Ghost ?" 
Reading the question even in this form, mak- 
ing the marevaavreg a participle of means — 
** by believing " — and not of time — " since be- 
lieving/' or " having believed/' {Ellicoti) — there 
is nothing gained on the part of those who 
deny a second and distinct work of the Holy 
Spirit ; for there lies plainly on the surface of 
this question the implication that Christian 
discipleship is not a proof, prima facie, of " re- 
ceiving the Holy Ghost." If discipleship im 

ILofC. 



too Love Enthroned. 

plies this blessing, St. Paul asked an absurd 
question when he thus catechised the twelve 
justified and baptized Ephesian disciples. The 
question propounded by St. Paul at the very 
first salutation was probably the interrogatory 
put to every convert to Christ who had been 
converted by the instrumentality of some other 
person. Ignorant of his spiritual state, and 
fearing that he might not have received " the 
greatest gift that man can wish or Heaven can 
send," he asks this all-important question : 
" Have you received the Holy Ghost since 
you believed ? " Should the great Apostle 
arise from the dead and come into our Churches 
to-day, we doubt not that this would be his 
first question. We are not so sure that he 
would not be more surprised by the answer of 
multitudes, " We have not so much as heard 
whether there be any Holy Ghost," as a per- 
manent indweller in the hearts of believers, 
although they have all their lives heard the 
apostolic blessing, in which the " communion 
of the Holy Ghost" is the crowning grace of 
that benediction. This would be because of 
its not being set forth as a distinct attainment 
— a prize set before each, to be grasped by faith. 



Metaphorical Representations. I o I 

We understand that the baptism, the anoint- 
ing, the fullness, the abiding, the indwelling, 
the constant communion, the sealing, the ear- 
nest, of the Holy Spirit, are equivalent terms, 
expressive of the state of Christian perfection. 
Wherever these terms occur, the Spirit of in- 
spiration is pointing to that state of serene 
rest, that unbroken peace, that repose in the 
blood of Christ, that unwavering trust in God, 
that deliverance from fleshly desire, and that 
eradication of inbred sin, which come from be- 
ing " filled with all the fullness of God." This 
great blessing is the constant theme of the 
Apostle Paul, especially in his later epistles. 
He exhorts all to be filled with the Spirit ; he 
prays for believers that they " may know the 
love of Christ which passeth knowledge ; that 
Christ may dwell in their hearts." St. Paul 
was a practical man, and never wasted his 
time in urging the impracticable, in inciting to 
the unattainable. According to Meyer the 
ordinary sequence of blessings is, {a) Hearing; 
(b) Faith, implying preventing and saving 
grace ; (c) Baptism ; (d) Communication of 
the Holy Spirit. Compare together Acts ii> 
37, 38, (a, c, d;) viii, 6, 12, 17, (a, b y c, d;) xix, 



102 Love Enthroned. 

5, 6, (c 9 d.) Acts x, 44, (d, c,) and perhaps ix, 17, 
are exceptional cases. The reason for the seem- 
ing blending of the baptism of the Holy Ghost 
with regeneration in exceptional instances in the 
Acts of the Apostles, is to be attributed to the 
fact that the regenerate were urged to the im- 
mediate attainment of this great blessing, so 
that they did attain it with the interval of only 
a brief period. A similar experience was that 
of Rev. John Fletcher, who seems to have 
been born into the kingdom with such a grasp 
of faith that he apprehended Jesus Christ as 
his complete Saviour a very few days after- 
ward. In the days of John Wesley, where this 
privilege was held up to the young convert by 
the preachers, and exemplified by many be- 
lievers, there are instances of the attainment 
of perfect love within a day or two after justi- 
fication. " The next morning I spoke severally 
with those who believed they were sanctified. 
There were fifty-one in all — twenty-one men, 
twenty-one widows or married women, and 
nine young women or children. In one of 
these the change was wrought three weeks 
after she was justified ; in three, seven days 
after it ; in one, five days ; and in S. L., aged 



Metaphorical Representations. 1 03 

fourteen, two days only." — Wesley s Journal^ 
August 4, 1762. 

Please observe how minute and searching 
Wesley was in his investigations into this sub- 
ject. No naturalist in pursuit of a scientific 
truth could be more patient and painstaking 
in the collection of facts from which to make 
his induction. Wesley may well be called the 
spiritual Bacon. 

Again, two days afterward, he says of an- 
other Society, " Many believed that the blood 
of Jesus Christ had cleansed them from all sin. 
I spoke to these, forty in all, one by one. 
Some of them said they received the blessing 
ten days, some seven, some four, some three 
days after they found peace with God, and two 
of them the next day. What marvel, since 
one day is with God as a thousand years ! " 

To our position that the baptism of the 
Spirit is identical with entire sanctification, it 
may be objected that there was no need of the 
purification of Jesus Christ, and yet he, the 
sinless man, was baptized with the Holy Ghost. 
Our reply to this is, that entire sanctification 
is a negative work — the destruction of sin ; the 
positive work, the constructive part, is much 



ro4 Love Enthroned. 

the greater — it is the subsidizing of all the fac- 
ulties, filling all the capacities with Divine life 
and power. A sinless soul may need the posi- 
tive when it has no need of the negative part 
of the work wrought by the Holy Spirit. We 
believe that Jesus was baptized of the Holy 
Ghost because that baptism, at a certain stage 
of spiritual development, is the normal method 
of advancement necessary to the perfect un- 
folding of the spiritual life of every soul. As 
many people are greatly puzzled by Christ's 
baptism by the Holy Spirit, as if it were a 
strange and abnormal thing, we will endeavor 
to divest the subject of some of its difficulties. 
All orthodox believers admit that two dis- 
tinct natures are so blended in Jesus Christ as 
to constitute one personality. The human 
nature was not changed by its union with the 
Divine. By Christ's human nature we mean 
his perfect human soul and body. This nature 
was subject to the limitations and laws of uni- 
versal humanity. The body grew in stature, 
the intellect in strength, the moral and spirit- 
ual susceptibilities in capacity and beauty. 
" He grew in favor with God and man." To 
this end he made diligent use of all the means of 



Metaphorical Representations. 105 

grace, read the law, the psalms, and the proph- 
ets, prayed much in secret, fasted on important 
occasions, and gathered with the worshipers in 
the synagogues and in the temple. As a man, 
these means of grace were as necessary as to 
any other Jew who would retain the favor of 
God. He did not, as the Son of God, need 
such means for retaining his love to the Fa- 
ther. As equal with the Holy Spirit he did not 
need any endowment of the Spirit ; for the 
Christian Church, both Papal and Protestant, 
believe the filioque rejected by the Greek 
Church, which declares that the Holy Spirit 
proceeds from the Father and the Son. But 
although the Son of God is the channel 
through which the Holy Spirit flows down to 
the world from the Father — the fons Trinitatis y 
the fountain of the Trinity — yet nevertheless 
Jesus, the Son of man, receives him in the 
way appointed for all believers — an instanta- 
neous effusion, received by faith in the prom- 
ise of the Father. In this Jesus Christ is our 
pattern as much as in prayer and praise. The 
form of the dove, and the voice from heaven, 
and the coincidence of the Spirit-baptism with 
water-baptism, were peculiarities of this bless- 



\ 



1 06 Love Enthroned. 

ing in the case of our Lord which are not 
essential to it. 

What a revolution would be wrought in the 
Church — what a resurrection to spiritual life— 
what a girding with power, if preachers in- 
sisted on the duty of all believers imitating 
their Master in the Spirit-baptism as in the 
water-baptism, in the reality as in the shadow, 
in the thing signified as in the symbol ! 

O blessed Jesus, hasten that day — the day 
of power in thy Church, as it was when it was 
the first inquiry of the preacher, " Have ye re- 
ceived the Holy Ghost since ye believed ? " 
Then would he who writes these words for thy 
glory, O adorable Saviour, joyfully drop his pen, 
and exclaim with good old Simeon, " nunc di- 
mittis" " now lettest thou thy servant depart 
in peace ! " 

§ 2. The Anointing. 

The anointing abideth and teacheth. 1 John 
ii, 27. The Anointing is a person, because he 
teacheth. The allusion is to the consecration 
of kings and priests when they are set apart 
from common life to sacred offices. But when 
God sets apart his kings and priests he pours 



Metaphorical Representations. 107 

upon them the unction of the Holy Ghost, the 
baptism of the Spirit, the blessed Comforter, 
who abides forever. The Paraclete, Monitor, 
or Comforter, is a gift not promised to peni- 
tent sinners, but to those who already love 
and obey Christ. John xiv, 15, 16. In the days 
of the apostles, the promise of the Father, the 
Comforter, was sought for by believers as a 
definite blessing, and was ordinarily received 
very soon after regeneration, (Acts viii, 15, 17,) 
because young converts were instructed and 
urged to seek it with all their hearts. St. 
Paul's first question to the Christian neophyte 
was, " Have ye received the Holy Ghost since 
ye believed ? " And, if they had heard only 
of water-baptism, they were instructed in the 
advanced doctrine of the Holy Ghost. Acts 
xix, 2-5. The distinct nature of this blessing 
is seen in the rite of confirmation, still prac- 
ticed in the Anglican, Lutheran, Roman, and 
Greek Churches, derived from the apostolical 
act of laying on hands for imparting the gift of 
the Holy Ghost. All these Churches are right 
in teaching that there is a change subsequent 
to regeneration, (baptism in their theology,) 
a sharply defined transition and enlargement 



108 Love Enthroned. 

of the spiritual life. Their error consists in 
shutting up the anointing Spirit to the nanow 
channels of ritualism, making an unbroken 
chain of successional ordinations necessary to 
the down-flowing of the Sanctifier, as an elec- 
tric current of Divine power. He is received 
only by faith on the part of the recipient, 
whether with or without the imposition of 
hands. In modern times, if testimonies are 
to be believed, the Lord pours his anointing 
Spirit upon the hearts of believers without 
priestly intervention more frequently than with 
it, because those who employ the rite are apt 
to rest in the symbol, and to imagine that they 
have the thing signified. 

The spiritual unction, like its symbol, anoint- 
ing with oil, is instantaneous. The preparation 
may have extended through years ; the act is 
momentary. The result in both cases is per- 
manent. The man is set apart from a private 
to a public life — from a subject to a monarch. 
He is henceforth to be a king as long as he 
lives, though he may vacate his royalty. The 
holy consecratory ointment was not a simple 
oil, but was compounded (Exod. xxx, 23, 24) of 
four principal spices: pure myrrh, sweet cinna- 



Perfect Love as a Distinct State. log 

mon, sweet calamus, and cassia, with olive oil. 
These beautifully typify the gifts and graces 
of the Holy Spirit. The presence of sweet 
spices only prefigures that the anointing im- 
parts no acerbity of disposition, no acid tem- 
pers, but only gentle and amiable qualities and 
benevolent affections. The anointing ointment 
was holy, and God forbade for all time, on pain 
of death, any imitation of it. Exodus xxx, 33. 
What does this symbolize, but that a hypo- 
critical profession of the spiritual unction, or 
fullness of the Holy Ghost, is a capital offense? 
The soul, Spirit-anointed, is set apart from self, 
and solemnly and perpetually consecrated unto 
God, with the possibility of plucking the crown 
from his brow and casting it away for ever. 
Rev. iii, 11. But few sovereigns ever abdi- 
cate ; and few souls once crowned priests and 
kings unto God ever divest themselves of the 
kingly dignity conferred by the fragrant chrism 
of the Holy Ghost. It is a great honor to be 
born into a royal family: it is a greater to be 
anointed king. Hence the anointing, says 
Wesley, " is immensely greater than the new 
birth ; " greater in the joy unspeakable which 
fills and floods the soul "anointed with the oil 



no Love Enthroned. 

of gladness;" greater in conscious dignity and 
power, being invited to sit with the glorified 
God-man on his throne, as he has gone up to 
share the throne of his Father. The unction 
of the Holy One is a greater blessing than the 
bodily presence of the Lord Jesus raised from 
the dead and daily conversing with us. " It is 
expedient (better) for you that I go away ; for 
if I go not away the Comforter will not come 
unto you." Although the miracle-worker, who 
authenticates the Gospel, should withdraw, 
you will be the gainers, even in point of assur- 
ance, by the indwelling of his Successor in your 
consciousness, dispelling doubt, and giving in- 
tuitive certainty. Reader, with this Divine 
Indweller, you will have a thousand-fold more 
joy than the human presence of Jesus, mag- 
netic as he was to those who loved him, ever 
gave. Your efficiency in Christian work, and 
boldness for Jesus, will be wonderfully in- 
creased. Hast thou, my Christian friend, re- 
ceived the Holy Ghost, the Sanctifier, in his 
abiding fullness? Do you have the constant 
experience of the crowning blessing invoked 
in the apostolic benediction — the communion 
of the Holy Ghost f 



Perfect Love as a Distinct State. 1 1 1 

" O ye tender babes in Jesus ! 

Hear your heavenly Father's will ; 
Claim your portion, plead his promise, 

And he quickly will fulfill. 

" Pray, and the refining fire 

Will come quickly from above : 
Now believe, and claim the blessing ; 

Nothing less than perfect love." 

We have assumed that this anointing is the 
privilege of every believer, because all such are 
kings and priests unto God. St. Paul implies 
that the Corinthians are generally enjoying 
this blessing. He says, (2 Cor. i, 21,) " He that 
hath anointed us is God." We understand 
the plural pronoun to include the writer and 
the believers addressed.* St. John, writing to 
the Church universal, in his General Epistle 
asserts that as a body they had the anointing. 
"Ye have an unction from the Holy One" — 
Christ — "and ye know all things." It was a 
grace commonly enjoyed by primitive Chris- 
tians, but did not exhaust itself upon them. 
" The residue of the Spirit " is with Him whom 
giving cannot impoverish nor withholding en- 
rich. Christ received the Holy Ghost without 
measure, (John iii, 34,) not to retain, but to 

* See Alford. 



ii2 Love Enthroned. 

impart. He is the almoner of the Father's 
bounty, the channel through whom he pours 
the river of his mercy. The Father is the fount- 
ain, the Son is the aqueduct, and the Holy 
Ghost is the Niagara, outpouring the water of 
life ceaselessly and abundantly for the refresh- 
ing all thirsty, believing souls. This explains 
the two statements, that the Holy Ghost is the 
unmeasured gift of the Father, and again that 
Christ baptizes with the Holy Ghost. Seeing 
that the Son hath all which the Father hath, 
the Father is said to send forth the Spirit of 
his Son into the hearts of his children, (Gal. 
iv, 6,) in the name, through the mediation, at 
the prayer of the Son. John xiv, 16. The 
Father anoints believers by giving them his 
Spirit as he has anointed the Son. 

§ 3. The Abiding Comforter. 

Many persons, in reading the New Testa- 
ment, find no such sharply-defined, instantane- 
ous transition in the Christian life after regen- 
eration as is taught by the modern advocates 
of Christian perfection. This results from their 
failure to identify with this blessing the bap- 
tism of the Holy Ghost, the fullness of the 



Perfect Love as a Distinct State. 1 1 3 

Spirit, the unction that abideth and teache^h, 
and the gift of the abiding Comforter. It is 
the purpose of this chapter to show the identi- 
ty of perfect love with the Comforter promised 
by Jesus in his last address to his disciples. 

1. The Comforter here promised is not lim- 
ited to the office of imparting consolation. 
The Greek term "paraclete" might have been 
rendered assistant, monitor, teacher, or guide. 
He illumines, and hence sanctifies, for purifica- 
tion is through a perception of the truth. He 
sheds abroad a knowledge of Christ's love to 
the soul. Love is the regenerating principle, 
the seed of God. When love becomes perfect 
by the full and constant abiding of the Com- 
forter, all antagonisms are excluded, and the 
plane is reached which is called the higher 
Life. 

2. Consider that the abiding Comforter is 
not promised by Jesus in St. John's Gospel 
(chapters xiv-xvi) to penitent sinners, but to 
believers who already love Christ. He opens 
his address by asserting, "Ye believe in God," 
and by assuring them that they are heirs to 
the "many mansions " in his Father's house. 

" I go to prepare a place for you." For 

8 



ii4 Love Enthroned. 

impenitent sinners a place is already prepared 
— the place originally " prepared for the devil 
and his angels." " I will receive you unto 
myself," is a promise never made to an unre- 
generate soul. 

3. The distinctive condition of receiving the 
Comforter is love toward Christ evinced by 
obedience : " If ye love me, keep my com- 
mandments ; and I will pray the Father, and 
he will give you another Comforter, that he 
may abide with you for ever." Several very 
important truths are here implied. First, that 
love to Christ, genuine love, having the fruit- 
age of obedience, is possible, before the Com- 
forter consciously abides in the believer. He 
unconsciously suggests the truth and prompts 
to repentance and faith, and leads and guides 
the repenting sinner. There can be no initial 
Divine life without the Spirit. But he does 
not manifest his presence in the consciousness 
as in the advanced, or technically called higher, 
life. This consciousness of the presence of the 
Holy Spirit as distinguished from his hidden 
operations below the gaze of consciousness, is 
distinctly announced as one peculiarity of the 
gift of the Comforter. "But ye knozv him, for 



Perfect Love as a Distinct State. 115 

he dwelleth with you and shall be in you." 
Up to this point the work of the Spirit may 
have been observed ; but the Worker has been 
vailed from the view of the soul, so that there 
was room for doubt whether the operation 
was natural or supernatural ; whether the good 
thoughts, righteous purposes, and holy aspi- 
rations came from self, or from a concealed 
Divine suggester. Hence, nearly all orthodox 
theologians, " including Fletcher and Wesley, 
agree that assurance is not essential to saving 
faith, and so not necessarily connected with it. 
They agree — especially the Assembly of Di- 
vines, Baxter, and Fletcher — that to doubt, or 
directly question, the presence and exercise of 
saving faith by the subject, is consistent with 
its presence and exercise in the same sub- 
ject, "* so long as he has a sincere desire to 
obey the Gospel and to receive Christ in ail 
his offices, bringing forth inward and outward 
fruits meet for repentance, fearing God and 
working righteousness. This state may be 
occasionally alleviated by the witness of the 
Spirit, intermittently enjoyed through weak* 
ness of faith. In this state of twilight, with 

* " Saving Faith." By Rev. I. Chamberlayne, D D. 



n6 Love Enthroned. 

occasional gleams of sunshine, the majority of 
the modern Church are dwelling, because they 
do not apprehend and claim the privilege of 
the abiding Comforter, — a sun standing ever 
on the meridian and pouring the full splendors 
of assurance upon them. Christ gives substan- 
tially the same promise, resting on the same 
condition of love to him, when he says, " He 
that hath my commandments, and keepeth 
them, he it is that loveth me ; and he that 
loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I 
will love him, and will manifest myself unto 
him." Here is the same promise of the Com- 
forter: " He shall take of mine and show them 
unto you." " He shall glorify me." " He shall 
testify of me." All manifestations of Christ 
are through the Comforter, except the mirac- 
ulous appearing of Jesus in human form to 
Saul, near Damascus, to qualify him for the 
apostleship. It is no manifestation, if the Di- 
vine is not brought into direct contact with 
the human. Moreover, the manifestation of a 
person to a person must have a point of in- 
stantaneous recognition, however gradual may 
have been their approaches to, and however 
progressive may be their intimacy after, such 



Perfect Love as a Distinct State. 117 

recognition. He had manifested himself to 
Mary Magdalene as a pardoning Saviour, for- 
giving her sins, and as almighty conqueror 
of the infernal powers, casting out of her seven 
devils or demons. But the manifestation of 
Christ to Mary through the Comforter will 
exalt him in her esteem infinitely higher than 
her poor conceptions of him in the flesh, and 
her communion with him will be a thousand 
times more precious than when she gazed 
upon his countenance and hung upon his lips. 
She will henceforth look for him and find him 
within her own soul, and not in his pathways 
and abiding-places in Palestine. She loved 
him before, but now her soul is a furnace all 
aglow with an affection deeper, stronger, and 
more spiritual than before. Her will has melt- 
ed into his by the " Spirit of burning." Self 
has been absorbed by a union with Him who 
once took away her sins. 

It is remarkable that Jesus should have 
made four distinct promises of the Comforter 
in one short passage in his farewell address. 
John xiv, 15-26. This repetition emphasizes 
this declaration. Let us examine the third 
promise : " If any man love me, he will keep 



u8 Love Enthroned. 

my words ; and my Father will love him, and 
we will come unto him, and make our abode 
with him." To say nothing about the we im- 
plying, as the pronoun does, equality with the 
Father and the utmost intimacy with him, we 
cal- attention to the same condition, namely, 
love, the same test of love, obedience, the per- 
petuity of the promised blessing, found in the 
word abode as in the words " abide " and "dwell- 
eth," in the previous promises. The blessing 
itself is more strongly expressed — " we," the 
Son and the Father, will come unto him. Says 
Dr. Whedon, " The Father, Son, and Spirit 
will in spirit come into union with the believ- 
er's spirit. And can any one imagine that the 
believer will be for ever unconscious of his 
spiritual guests, and incapable of realizing the 
actuality of their communion ? The believer 
may enjoy a conscious communion with Christ 
and God."* We apprehend that an objec- 
tion will be raised here, that Jesus had distinct 
reference to the one coming of the Comforter 
on the day of Pentecost to the collective body 
of believers, and that he had no reference to 

* For a discussion on the Recognition of the Persons of the 
Trinity, see foot-note in chapter xiii. 



Perfect Love as a Distinct State. ng 

individuals scattered along through the dis- 
pensation of the Spirit during thousands of 
years, and therefore the promise applies to 
til em only in this sense — that they will be born 
in the dispensation of the Spirit. We answer 
that impenitent sinners are born under this 
dispensation, and yet the promise is not to 
them. Says the commentator just quoted, 
" In the coming dispensation of the Spirit the 
manifestations of Christ will be made to the 
spirits of those who love him, and to those 
alone." This confirms the position taken by 
us, that the promised Comforter was not de- 
signed for the collective lovers of Jesus, and 
for them alone, as the inauguration of what 
Fletcher styles " the kingdom of the Holy" 
Ghost, but for individuals in all ages who ful- 
fill the conditions — love and obedience.* We 
come to the same conclusion when we exam- 
ine the conditions. Love is an affection for a 
personal object. It belongs to the individual. 

* Says Alford on John vii, 39 : "John does not say that 
the words were a prophecy of what happened on the day of 
Pentecost ; but of the Spirit \ which believers were about to 
receive. Their first reception of him must not be i' logically 
put in the place of all his indwelling and working, which are 
here intended." 



i2o Love Enthroned. 

If it were something to be possessed and ex- 
hibited only by the organic body of believers — ■ 
the Church in its corporate capacity — individu- 
als could not fulfill the conditions. We educe 
the same truth from the fact of the perpetuity 
of the Comforter. " He shall abide with you for 
ever." The pentecostal recipients of the Com- 
forter are all dead. Did the Comforter withdraw 
from the Church when the last of the pente- 
costal assembly went into his grave ? Is for ever 
limited to a single generation? Jesus does not 
thus trifle with human hopes. Through all the 
ages, therefore, the Comforter will abide, not in 
(Ecumenical Councils, as the representatives of 
the Church, nor in the Pope, as the represent- 
ative of the Council, but in those hearts which 
invite his entrance by loving Jesus and obey- 
ing his law. We have elsewhere proved that 
Peter's military hearers were in a justified state, 
having " the spirit of faith and the purpose of 
righteousness." 

We have endeavored to prove in this chap- 
ter that the spiritual development of the disci- 
ples of Christ was perfectly normal, and hence 
an example for us to follow. Up to the Pen- 
tecost they loved Jesus, and were tenderly 



Perfect Love as a Distinct State. 121 

beloved by their Master; but they had not 
reached that crisis which should divest them 
of their prejudices, spiritualize their views of 
Christ's kingdom, purify their hearts, and gird 
them with irresistible spiritual energy. 

An objection may be made, that the endow- 
ment of the Spirit in the case of the disciples 
was necessary in order to qualify them to write 
infallible religious truth and narrate facts which 
had faded almost entirely away in their memo- 
ries, and that such an endowment is not needed 
by us. But only a few of them were called to 
write the Gospels, and the Acts, and the Epis- 
tles. There were at least a hundred and four- 
teen gathered in that upper chamber who were 
not called to be sacred writers. These, never- 
theless, received the Spirit of truth as did those 
who became theopneustic writers. Those who 
did not need the Spirit of truth to restore to 
freshness the faded tablet of the memory, did 
nevertheless need him to make real to their 
spiritual perception the truths of the Gospel. 
Hence to all disciples of every age he is the 
Spirit of reality, because he gives substance to 
supersensual truth, and reality to that which, 
to mere intellectual apprehension, is shadowy 



122 Love Enthroned. 

and unreal, and destitute of power to control 
the conduct and beautify the character. If 
we contemplate the weakness and inefficiency 
of average Christians, paralyzed by doubt and 
swayed by " things seen and temporal/' we 
shall not deny the need of the coming of the 
abiding Comforter to gird with strength, and 
to put the telescope of a perfect faith to the 
eye to bring the things "not seen and eternal ,! 
near, and make them more influential than this 
corrupt world. He embodies the sum total 
of all spiritual blessings. More willing is the 
Holy Father to give him to each believer than 
the mother to give the healing medicine to 
her dying child, or the father to give food and 
raiment to his soldier son who falls upon his 
threshold naked and emaciated, just escaped 
from Andersonville prison. A singular con- 
firmation of the statement that the Holy 
Spirit, in the fullness of his grace, comprises 
the sum total of spiritual good, is found in 
reading Matthew vii, n, and Luke xi, 13; the 
"good things" of the former are explained in 
the latter by " the Holy Spirit." 



T}u Higher Life Prayer. 123 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE HIGHER LIFE PRAYER. 

IN the third chapter of the Epistle to the 
Ephesians (verses 14-21, which see) Paul's 
closet door gets ajar, and all the Christian 
ages are thrilled with his sublime whisperings 
in the ear of God. Come, stand by, me and 
listen. It is an honorable kind of eavesdrop- 
ping. Like his Master, Paul's most earn- 
est entreaties are not for impenitent sinners 
— " the world " — but for believers in Christ, 
for " the perfecting of the saints." But be- 
fore following the lowly wrestler through the 
successive petitions of this wonderful prayer, 
let us glance at the persons for whom bless- 
ings so great are supplicated. The Ephesian 
Church was composed of believers of far less 
culture, stability, and moral stamina than are 
the members of our modern Churches. They 
were mostly of the poor, the laboring class. 
These are always the first to receive Christ 
when he is preached in any community. They 



124 Love Enthroned. 

were slaves, servants, mechanics, and day- 
laborers, coming into rough contact with soci- 
ety, and exposed to temptations of the lowest 
class — theft, fornication, brawling, and drunk- 
enness. The Gentile converts were struggling 
with their old pagan habits, making a desper- 
ate fight against the heathenish vices which 
lured them on every hand. The Jewish be- 
lievers in Christ in foreign cities were probably 
gathered from the poor — a class whose repre- 
sentatives are to be found crowded into the 
Jews' quarter of our modern cities, small ped- 
dlers and old-clothes men, aspiring to be money 
brokers and usurers — for men change their sky 
and not their character by crossing seas. 

Such had been the antecedents of this por- 
tion of the Ephesian Church. It would be nat- 
ural to say that it is preposterous to expect 
any high degree of spirituality to be attained 
by the first, or even by the second, generation 
of such Christians, just gathered from the bot- 
tom of pagan and Jewish society. But St. 
Paul is lifted above the natural, and grasps by 
faith a supernatural power, which may sud. 
denly lift these once low-lived men and wom- 
en up to the summit of moral and spiritual 



The Higher Life Prayer. 125 

excellence. These remarks have been made 
for the especial benefit of those who im- 
agine that the higher life was never designed 
for people whose condition compels them to 
take what is called " the rough and tumble of 
life ; " and that only contemplative clergymen, 
wealthy and leisurely women unblessed with 
little children, and retired business men with 
ample fortunes and few temptations, can walk 
steadily in the King's highway of holiness. But 
in the Ephesian Church we have slaves, sub- 
ject to the abuse of haughty masters, and from 
infancy addicted to servile vices ; artisans, 
poverty-pinched, because for Christ's sake they 
have quit shrine-making; pickpockets and 
burglars, (Eph. iv, 28,) still eyed with suspicion 
by the lovers of good order; convex ted har- 
lots and whoremongers, (Eph. v, 3, 8,) wrest- 
ling with gigantic, pampered lusts ; and moth- 
ers in homes of poverty, with troops of fretful 
children at their heels. St. Paul expects that 
a Church made up of such unpromising mate- 
rial will, through the cleansing power of the 
Sanctifier, be "holy and without blemish," a 
glorious Church, not having "spot or wrinkle. ,, 
The degree of spiritual power with which 



126 Love Enthroned. 

these believers may be endowed is " according 
to the riches of his glory ; " that pre-eminent 
glory which St. John beheld, not in the mag- 
nificence of the material universe, but in God's 
moral attributes, " shining in the face of Jesus 
Christ," " full of grace and truth." Here we find 
the illimitable measure of the Spirit's power to 
strengthen the believer. The power of the 
Comforter is equal to the glory of the Redeem- 
er. St. Paul prays that these feeble, tempted 
souls may be strengthened with might by the 
Spirit in the inner man, to a degree commensur- 
ate with the inconceivable glory surrounding, 
as with a halo, the character of God. In other 
words, he prays for an excellence which Christ 
preaches in his sermon on the mount — " Be ye 
therefore perfect, even as your Father which is 
in heaven is perfect." 

The next petition is, " that Christ may dwell 
in your hearts by faith : " thus agreeing with 
that most precious promise of Jesus in his 
farewell address to his disciples, " I will abide 
in you." The full significance of this brief 
petition is, that the Son of God should rep- 
resentatively, by the Holy Spirit, make his 
permanent abode in the believer's conscious- 



The Higher Life Prayer. 127 

ness, rectifying his will, purifying his affections, 
illuminating his understanding, subsidizing and 
directing all his energies, and pervading every 
atom of his body, and filling every capacity of 
his spirit, making him a particle of Chrises 
body, " of his flesh and bones," through which 
the currents of his life ever flow. If Christian 
perfection is not sought in this petition for the 
abiding Christ in the heart of each disciple in 
Ephesus, we fail to comprehend the meaning 
of that term. "That ye may be rooted," like 
a tree, " and grounded," like a building, " in 
love." This is but a metaphorical expression 
for that perfect love that casteth out all fear 
that hath torment. The education of the in- 
tellect, and the discipline of the moral nature, 
tend toward stability of character. But this is 
an inferior excellence in the Apostle's estima- 
tion compared with that stability produced by 
love binding the soul to God as with a golden 
chain ; the stability of a planet freely moving 
in its orbit around its all-glorious center of at- 
traction. " That ye may be able to compre- 
hend with all (perfected) saints, what is the 
breadth, and length, and depth, and height." 
The breadth and length of what? Paul has 



128 Love Enthroned. 

failed to say, except by implication in the next 
verse, from which we infer that it is " the love 
of Christ." In what sense St. Paul has applied 
these geometrical dimensions to love — a spirit- 
ual quality and without extension — it is difficult 
to determine. But we believe that their mean- 
ing is to be sought in the logic of Aristotle, in 
which St. Paul must have been drilled in the 
university of Tarsus, the most celebrated seat of 
Grecian learning east of Athens. The Greek 
logicians employ the term breadth to denote 
the extension of a notion, the number of indi- 
viduals to whom it will apply, as, for instance, 
man includes every being possessed of human 
attributes. The term depth denotes the inten- 
sion of a notion, the aggregate of qualities 
which lie piled up one upon another, in one in- 
dividual distinguishing him from all others. Sir 
William Hamilton adds to these logical terms 
a philosophical term, namely, protension, ap- 
plicable only to time or extended duration. 
With these terms — extension, intension, and 
protension, throwing a flood of light upon the 
breadth, depth, and length of divine love, we 
are able to get an enlarged view of the com- 
prehensiveness of this petition. " That ye mar 



The Higher Life Prayer. 129 

know the breadth," is to know the vast num- 
ber of individuals of our race embraced in the 
scheme of redemption. It is a remarkable 
fact, that as soon as love is fully shed abroad 
in the believers heart he immediately over- 
leaps the limitations of his theology, if he has 
been so unfortunate as to have been educated 
in the belief of a limited atonement, and feels 
irresistibly drawn toward every lost sinner as 
the object of Jesus* mighty love. Hence it is 
that the missionary spirit is so intense in fully 
consecrated souls. They have been brought 
into the most intimate sympathy with the 
breadth of Christ's love. Hence they plunge 
into the moral cesspools in our great cities, to 
pluck lost men and fallen women from the 
fires of perdition. The secret motive power 
which impels them to go down into these 
pits, and cheerfully breathe the fetid miasmas 
which settle there, is, that they know by expe- 
rience the amazing breadth of Jesus' love. 

" He left his Father's throne above ; 
(So free, so infinite, his grace !) 
Emptied himself of all but love, 

And bled for Adam's helpless race ; 
*Tis mercy all, immense and free, 
For, O my God, it found out me ! " 
9 



130 Love Enthroned. 

When Paul prays that the Ephesians may 
know the length of Christ's love, he prays for 
their eternal blessedness, for his love knows 
no limit in duration. In ordinary experience 
the sense of Christ's love is faint — he visits 
but does not abide. Hence there is a lurking 
fear that Jesus may cease to cherish him on 
whom he has once smiled, even though there 
should be no apostasy on the part of the be- 
liever. Such a state of experience cannot be 
called rest in Jesus. There is unrest and fear 
where there should be repose and confidence. 
There is no cure for this but the fullness of the 
Spirit, revealing the fullness and perpetuity of 
Christ's love to the believer. In that glad 
hour the believer knows that Christ can be 
fully trusted for the future, as well as for the 
present. He hears the Saviour say, 

" Mine is an unchanging love, 
Higher than the heights above, 
Deeper than the depths beneath, 
Free and faithful, strong as death. " 

In the first stages of Christian life the spirit- 
ual perception is not usually strong enough to 
hear this voice, but more frequently the ear is 
not intently turned in the right direction. But 
in that maturity of grace in which love is made 



The Higher Life Prayer. 131 

perfect, the feeling of the permanency of the 
Divine regard takes full possession of the soul, 
and it becomes a certainty that he will not de- 
sert us unless we desert him. This possibility 
cnly induces us to grasp with a firmer grip the 
promise that we shall be "kept by the power 
of God, through faith, unto salvation. " Then 
we exultingly ask, with the Apostle, " Who 
shall separate us from the love of Christ ?" 
that is, who will turn away Christ from loving 
us? "I am persuaded that neither death, nor 
life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, 
nor things present, nor things to come, nor 
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall 
be able to separate us from the love of God, 
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Mr. Wes- 
ley had been preaching thirty-four years before 
he was " thoroughly convinced ' that perfect 
love "is amissible," — " capable of being lost ' 
It is evident that he was not a believer in that 
kind of perfect love which may be experienced 
to-day and lost to-morrow; a species which 
many mistaken professors avow, to the great 
detriment of the genuine experience, and to 
the representation of the unchangeable Jesus 
as an exceedingly capricious being. 



r32 Love Enthroned. 

In the petition, " that ye may know the depth 
and height," we have really but one dimension, 
depth, which denotes the multiplied qualities 
of Christ's love, or, more exactly, the various 
spiritual perfections which it bestows on the 
believer. As God out of sunshine and dust 
makes all the varieties of color which clothe 
the landscape — as out of water and sunbeams 
he creates the seven colors of the solar spec- 
trum — so out of human faith and the Sun of 
righteousness he produces the whole rainbow 
of Christian graces. To know the depth of 
Christ's love is to possess all " the fruits of the 
Spirit, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentle- 
ness, meekness, fidelity, patience, and temper- 
ance," a spiritual constellation made up of 
" these gracious stars, perfect repentance, per- 
fect faith, perfect humility, perfect meekness, 
perfect self-denial, perfect resignation, perfect 
hope, perfect charity." 

The next petition is, that ye may "know 
the love of Christ which passeth knowledge." 
Divine solecism ! Blessed paradox ! To know 
the unknowable fullness of Christ's love ; to 
drop the short sounding-line of human ex- 
perience into the unfathomable ocean of the 



The Higher Life Prayer. 133 

Divine mercy. We understand St. Paul to 
assert that the love of Christ surpasses all 
merely intellectual comprehension and logical 
statement, while it is apprehended by the 
spiritual intuitions. All who pass into this 
deep experience are impressed with the vast- 
ness, the boundlessness, of Chrises love, a sea 
without bottom or shore. "How little of the 
sea," says Rutherford, " can a child carry in 
his hand ; as little am I able to take away of 
my great Sea, my boundless and running-over 
Christ Jesus ! " This is not a peculiarity of the 
experience of justification. The Ephesians had 
not yet been 

"Plunged in the Godhead's deepest sea 
And lost in its immensity." 

They were still only ankle deep, standing in 
some little land-locked bay, without any con- 
ception of the immense, the limitless, expanse 
of waters beyond their view, hidden by the 
intervening promontories of ignorance and 
doubt. This petition is distinctively for the 
"higher life," as is the next, "that ye may 
be filled with all the fullness of God," or more 
exactly, "even to all the fullness of God," even 
as he is full — each in your degree, but all to 



r34 Love Enthroned. 

your utmost capacity, with wisdom, might, and 
love. The rhetorical redundance of this petition 
strikingly exhibits the richness and fullness of 
the Apostle's experience struggling to find ut- 
terance in words. The thought, nakedly ex- 
pressed, is, " that ye may be filled with God. ,; 
In logical exactness there can be no increase 
to." filled. " But St. Paul's soul, all aglow 
with the ardors of Christian love, must inten- 
sify the expression by adding fullness to filled, 
and then crowning the thought with the tau- 
tological all as a finishing of the climax. We 
do not understand that this is a petition for 
the omnipresent and almighty God to com- 
press his infinitude to the limitations of the 
human body and soul, as in the mystery of the 
incarnation, in which there " dwells all the 
fullness of the Godhead bodily : " it is rather 
a prayer for that complement of blessing, each 
perfect in kind, which fills the cornucopia of 
God's grace under the remedial dispensation, 
and which is ready to be poured upon all 
who have the spiritual capacity, the faith, to 
receive them. To deny that this petition is 
for Christian perfection would be as absurd as 
to deny that the sun rolls daily through the 



The Higher Life Prayer. 135 

skies. St. Paul, aided by the Holy Spirit— 
we would speak reverently — could not have 
penned words more clearly and unequivocally 
describing the blessing of perfect love as 
taught in the Wesleyan standards. 

In our analysis of this prayer we have shown 
that every petition is an outbreathing of Paul's 
soul that the Ephesians might be made perfect 
in love. There is nothing negative in it ; there 
is no allusion to indwelling sin ; the aim of the 
whole is for the fullness of the divine life. It 
is certain that he himself enjoyed the high state 
of experience into which he would lead others. 
The struggling expression, the strain and cumu- 
lation of words, all indicate a soul running, with 
abounding joy, up this higher path, and not a 
mere guide-board with its foot planted in the 
ground, and outstretched, painted hand point- 
ing out the way which " the vulture's eye hath 
not seen." This heaping up terms, amplifying, 
heightening, and intensifying his expression, as 
if his soui was agonizing for utterance, is seen in 
the doxology at the end of the prayer. " Now 
unto Him that is able to do exceeding abun- 
dantly above all that we ask or think, accord- 
ing to the power that worketh in us." What 



136 Love Enthroned. 

a conception of the " exceeding greatness of 
Christ's power to us-ward who believe ' does 
St. Paul here take ! Can any one believe that 
this was revealed to his intellect by the Spirit 
of inspiration, and not to his consciousness in 
personal experience ? Who can say that the 
great Head of the Church stationed St. Paul 
as a porter to open the gate for others to enter 
this paradise regained — this Eden of love made 
perfect — while himself was tantalizingly for- 
bidden to enter so long as he dwelt in a fleshly 
tabernacle ? No, the Master is not so severe 
with his chosen servant. 

This doxology is a molten stream from the 
glowing heart of a Vesuvius. The inward fires 
cannot be restrained. " A power " is working in 
him. This power is the measure of the mar- 
velous work which will be wrought in every one 
that grasps the promises. One would think that 
it was enough to know that Christ Jesus " is 
able to do all we ask ; but St. Paul adds, " or 
think/' Thought always outstrips language. 
In religious experience words are but a pitiful 
mockery of the reality, and " language is 
lame " indeed. But not satisfied with this ex- 
pansion of the thought, Paul adds the word 



The Higher Life Prayer. 137 

above, which lifts the expression to an indefi- 
nite height. He then multiplies the force 
of the above by the word abundantly, a term 
which of itself is full and overflowing. The 
effect of abundantly, put before above, is, in 
mathematical phrase, to raise it to the second 
power. But this does not adequately set forth 
the amazing wealth of blessing stored up in 
the power of Christ as in an infinite treasury 
to be unlocked by the key of faith. He imme- 
diately broadens and deepens the abundantly 
by the illimitable term exceeding, which so en- 
larges the entire conception that our minds, 
struggling to keep up with the widening idea, 
fall back upon themselves in despair, when 
they attempt to compass in thought abun- 
dantly multiplied by exceeding, a thing as un- 
thinkable as infinity multiplied by infinity* 
Bear in mind that there is no limitation of the 
exercise of this power of Christ to the hour 
of death. On the face of every petition, in 
the use of verbs in the present tense, there 
lies prima-facie proof that St. Paul is praying 
for blessings to be enjoyed by the Ephesians 
immediately in this life. Recur now to the 
circumstances and antecedents of these Chris- 



138 Love Enthroned. 

tians as portrayed in the beginning of this 
chapter, and add to this the declaration that 
Jesus is yesterday, to-day, and for ever the 
same, and you, my dear reader, have ample 
ground for your faith in Jesus Christ for this 
great salvation. 

Reader, this very prayer has been preserved 
for eighteen centuries for your instruction in 
righteousness. The prayer is for you as much 
as for the dwellers in Ephesus. It was put on 
record as a permanent publication of the com- 
plete salvation to every generation — an inven- 
tory of the unsearchable riches of Christ — the 
rich gifts and blessings of which he is the almon- 
er through the Holy Spirit. It has been an- 
swered in the spiritual enlargement of thous- 
ands of souls all along the Christian centuries. 

We quote but one instance, the Spirit-bap- 
tism of a young Swiss preacher, who afterward 
became the bright evangelical light of Switz- 
erland, and whose " History of the Reforma- 
tion" is read throughout the Protestant world. 
Says Merle D'Aubign6 : " We were studying 
the Epistle to the Ephesians, and had got to 
the end of the third chapter. When we read 
the last two verses, ' Now unto Him who is 



The Higher Life Prayer. 139 

able to do exceeding abundantly above all 
that we ask or think, according to the power 
that worketh in us, unto Him be glory through- 
out all ages ; ' this expression fell upon my 
soul like a revelation from God. He can do 
by his power, I said to myself, above all we 
ask, above all even that we can think — nay, 
exceeding abundantly above all ! A full trust 
in Christ for the work to be done within my 
poor heart now filled my soul. We all three 
knelt down : and although I had never fully 
confided my inward struggle to my friends, the 
prayer of Rieu was filled with such admirable 
faith as he would have uttered had he known 
all my wants. When I arose in that inn room 
at Kiel, I felt as if my wings were renewed as 
the wings of eagles. From that time forward 
I comprehended that my own efforts were of 
no avail ; that Christ is able to do all by his 
power that worketh in us; and the habitual 
attitude of my soul was to lie at the foot of the 
cross, crying to Him, ' Here I am, bound hand 
and foot, unable to move, unable to do the 
least thing to get away from the enemy, who 
oppresses me. Do all thyself. I know thou 
wilt do it. Thou wilt even do exceeding abun- 



140 Love Enthroned. 

dantly above all I ask/ I was not disappoint- 
ed ; all my doubts were removed, my anguish 
quelled, and the Lord extended to me peace 
as a river. Then I could comprehend with 
all saints what is the breadth, and length, and 
depth, and height, and know the love of Christ 
which passeth knowledge. Then was I able 
to say, ' Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for 
the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee/ " 



The Three Dispensations. 141 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE THREE DISPENSATIONS. 

IN John Fletcher's portrait of St. Paul as a 
model evangelical preacher, he very em- 
phatically insists upon a thorough knowledge 
of the three great eras of spiritual life. These 
he denominates the dispensation of the Fa- 
ther, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. He 
who is unacquainted with the peculiarities of 
experience under these different dispensations 
cannot successfully apply Gospel truth, and 
give full proof of his ministry. For these dis- 
pensations, though in the order of develop- 
ment they were successive, are now co-exist- 
ent. Of those accepted of God, now dwelling 
on the earth, some are in the dispensation of 
the Father, some in that of the Son, and 
others in the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. 
The first are characterized by the fear of God, 
servile fear, with little love. This fear influ- 
ences conduct and shapes character. They 
fear God and work righteousness. They are 



142 Love Enthroned. 

kept from sinning, and are incited to purity 
and well-doing. They have no joy of the 
Holy Ghost, but only that which flows in the 
channels of nature, the approval of conscience 
for their right actions. Not having God's love 
shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Spirit, 
they are in doubt of their acceptance with God, 
and are often distressed when the written or 
unwritten law thunders its threatenings in 
their ears, " though visited at times with a few 
scattered rays of hope." They exist in all 
lands, but chiefly in non-evangelical countries, 
papal, pagan, and Mohammedan. Now and 
then an honest Deist, a devout Unitarian, with 
the head warped by early implanted error, but 
a sincere heart, may be found amid the full 
blaze of Gospel truth, still serving God in the 
same dispensation with uncircumcised Abram 
in Mesopotamia. In this view we find ground 
for charity toward the less enlightened sub- 
jects of God's kingdom, and strong motives 
for the abatement of bigotry. We learn to 
deal tenderly with those Cornelian souls 
whose prayers and alms go up for a memorial 
before God. We approach them, not with de- 
nunciations, but with invitations, while we 



The Three Dispensations. 143 

magnify Christ, and from our own experience 
assure them of the exceeding greatness of his 
power to us-ward who believe. By indiscrim- 
inately lumping them together with avowed 
Atheists and willful sinners, the incautious 
preacher gives them needless offense, and 
hedges up the path of advanced truth into 
their minds. In Christian lands these wor- 
shipers of the Father must be distinguished 
from those who reject the Son because of the 
strictness of his requirements, the inflexible 
terms of discipleship, and the spiritual inter- 
pretation of the moral law planting a thorn- 
hedge across the path of even the sinful 
thought, and kindling a fire in the house of 
their idols. Such are wickedly rejecting Jesus 
Christ, and are to be addressed as sinners, 
whether they assume the name of Evangelicals. 
Universalists, Socinians, or Free Religionists. 
"These go on without any symptom ot fear 
toward the gulf of perdition ; whether it be by 
the high road of vice, with the notoriously 
abandoned, or through the by-path of hypoc- 
risy, with pharisaical professors." 

" Under the dispensation of the Son the 
doubts of believers are dissipated, like those 



144 Love Enthroned. 

of the two disciples who journeyed to Em- 
maus, while they discover more clearly, and 
experience more powerfully, the truths of the 
Gospel." Still they know Christ after the 
flesh. They are not fully impressed with his 
divinity. The robe of humanity has not been 
made transparent for the dazzling radiance of 
the Godhead to shine through. Jesus is not 
yet glorified to their hearts, because the Spir- 
it, the Glorifier, has not taken up his abode in 
them. Hence they are but children ; their 
strength is small ; they are weak and unsteady; 
they have not full assurance. After brief pe- 
riods of joyful trust, doubts return to shake 
their confidence. Yet they testify of their 
love to God gaining ascendency over fear. 
They no longer utter the sad exclamation at 
the end of the seventh chapter of Romans, 
" O wretched man that I am ! " With grateful 
hearts and streaming eyes in view of their 
deliverance, they exultingly say, "I thank 
God through Jesus Christ our Lord." Joyful 
as is their state of freedom when contrasted 
with the bondage to fear under which they 
once groaned, they are conscious of an inward 
vacuity and longing for some object not at first 



The Three Dispensations. I45 

clearly defined. The study of the words of 
Jesus discloses to them the living water prom- 
ised by him in the last great day of the feast. 
" But this he spake of the Spirit, which they 
that believe on him should receive ; for the 
Holy Ghost was not yet given." " And I will 
pray the Father, and he shall give you another 
Comforter, that he may abide with you for- 
ever/' After the object of their desire has 
been pointed out to them, they begin to hun- 
ger and thirst after righteousness, after the 
Holy Spirit, who is the author of all inward 
purity. Then they emerge into the " kingdom 
of the Holy Ghost," as Fletcher styles it. 
They are filled with the Spirit. They now 
walk in the light constantly, are consciously 
cleansed from all sin, and have joy unspeak- 
able. The Spirit of adoption, formerly indi- 
rect and intermittent, has now become the 
abiding Comforter ; and to his direct assurance 
of sonship he adds that of entire sanctification 
and the fullness of Christ's love, " that we may 
know the things freely given to us of God." 
1 Cor. ii, 12. Fear, which had a painful pre- 
dominance in the dispensation of the Father, 

and shadowed the brightness of that of Jesus 
10 



146 Love Enthroned. 

Christ, is now completely banished. No tor- 
menting emotion can abide the presence of the 
Comforter. 

The scriptural proofs of these dispensations 
are abundant. Listen to Peter, preaching to 
Cornelius and his staff of officers. " God is no 
respecter of persons ; but in every nation he 
that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is 
accepted of him." 

From the summit of Mars' Hill, the Athe- 
nian, passing through the Agora, hears an ear- 
nest voice proclaiming to the high caste Autoch- 
thones, who boasted of their birth from the soil 
of Attica, a truth humiliating to their pride of 
race — " God . . . hath made of one blood all na- 
tions of men, and hath determined the bounds 
of their habitation ; that they should seek the 
Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find 
him, though he be not far from every one of 
us." The publicans (Roman officials) asked 
of John, " What shall we do ? ' He, seeing that 
they had no preparation for the dispensation 
of the Son, and that all that they could then 
appreciate was the obligation of the moral law, 
answered, " Exact no more than that which is 
appointed you." A band of Roman soldiers, 



The Three Dispensations. 147 

utterly ignorant of the prophecies relating to 
Christ, approach the same great preacher, and 
demand, " What shall we do ? " John, aiming 
to make them perfect in the dispensation of 
Gentilism, which consists in doing right so far 
as known, immediately replies, " Do violence 
to no man, neither accuse falsely, and be con- 
tent with your wages." But when John's audi- 
ence is made up of Jews, he preaches always 
from one text of Isaiah's prophetic evangel, 
" Prepare ye the way of the Lord." Here is 
the dispensation of the Son — " One cometh 
after me whose shoes' latchet I am not worthy 
to unloose." Glorious foregleams of the min- 
istration of the Spirit also burst upon John's 
vision, and he exclaims, " He shall baptize you 
with the Holy Ghost and with fire." 

The official presence and manifest work of 
the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers after 
Jesus was glorified, as totally distinct from his 
essential presence and secret work in the 
hearts of just pagans and Jews under the draw- 
ings of the Father or the teachings of the Son, 
is most conclusively announced by Peter on 
the day of pentecost. " Jesus, being by the 
right hand of God exalted, and having received 



148 Love Enthroned. 

of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, 
hath shed forth this (plenitude of grace, the 
effects of) which ye now see and hear." Since 
these Jerusalem sinners had insulted the per- 
son of Jesus, the genuineness of their repent- 
ance must now be tested by public baptism in 
his hated name, before they could be assured 
of pardon, a test never required of penitent 
sinners afterward. " Be baptized every one 
of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the 
remission of sins, and ye shall receive the 
gift of the Holy Ghost." Thus these souls 
were led rapidly through the dispensation of 
the Son to that of the Spirit. The ministry 
of Jesus was very brief, possibly typifying the 
short interval in the scheme of salvation be- 
tween the drawings of the Father unto Christ, 
and the outpouring of the Holy Ghost upon 
the young believer in Jesus. Thus the com- 
passionate Father draws the willing soul to the 
redeeming Son, who passes it over to the 
quickening and purifying energies of the blessed 
Sanctifier. The second dispensation was evi- 
dently designed to be a transition point only, 
and not a stage in the spiritual development. 
But contrary to the Divine purpose, multi- 



The Three Dispensations. 149 

tudes linger all their lives at this point, instead 
of passing on to the higher and richer experi- 
ence of the fullness of the Spirit : while 
other multitudes are so " slow of heart to be- 
lieve," that they linger for years and decades 
in that inferior dispensation of the law, the 
child-leader, before their tardy feet tread the 
threshold of the Great Teacher. To quote all 
the Scriptures descriptive of the distinct office 
and work of the third person of the Trinity 
would be impossible in this essay. Let these 
suffice : " Your body is the temple of the Holy 
Ghost." " Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, 
whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemp- 
tion." " Be filled with the Spirit ; speaking 
to yourselves in psalms, and hymns, and spir- 
itual songs, making melody in your hearts unto 
the Lord." " Rejoice evermore. Pray with- 
out ceasing. In every thing give thanks." 

Says Mr. Fletcher, " Without an experi- 
mental knowledge of these several states, a 
minister can no more lead sinners to evangel- 
ical perfection than an illiterate peasant can 
communicate sufficient intelligence to his rus- 
tic companions to pass an examination for the 
highest degree in a university." " As the pru- 



iSo Love Enthroned. 

dent physician proportions his medicines to 
the different ages and habits of his patients, so 
the enlightened pastor, who feels himself con- 
cerned for the spiritual health of his flock, sees 
it necessary to act with equal care and discre- 
tion. He preaches the dispensation of the 
Son to those who, like Socrates and Plato, are 
longing for a Divine instructor. He leads 
them either from the law of Moses or from the 
law of nature to the Gospel of Christ. Lastly, 
to such as have devoutly embraced this part 
of the Gospel, he publishes the glorious econ- 
omy of the Holy Spirit, which was not fully 
opened till after the bodily appearance of the 
Redeemer was withdrawn from the world." 

It must be borne in mind that the Son and 
Spirit have always been occupied in secretly 
influencing the hearts of men. But there was 
a time when the Son became manifest, making 
a visible exhibition of his wonderful works. 
Also, at a certain point in the world's history, 
the Holy Ghost began to work in a more sen- 
sible manner in the consciousness of believers. 
The mysterious triune personality of God was 
disclosed to our faith because the advanced 
stages of spiritual development under the Son 



The Three Dispensations. 1 5 1 

and the Spirit could not be realized except 
through faith in the distinct offices of these 
persons. To keep these in the faith of the 
Church in all ages, the names of the three 
stand in the formula of baptism, and distinct 
blessings are ascribed to each in the apostolic 
benediction. 

It may be objected that this view of the 
successive gradations of privilege under the 
three persons of the Godhead has a tendency 
to degrade the Father before the brighter 
glories of the Son's kingdom, and to belittle 
the Son in the presence of the full splendors 
of the ministrations of the Spirit. But a lit- 
tle examination of experience, Church history, 
and the Scriptures, will obviate this objec- 
tion. They who are brought to the cross of 
Christ testify to a new and profound appre- 
ciation of the work of the Father ; while all 
who enter into the dispensation of the Spirit 
bear witness that Christ is in an astonishing 
manner exalted in their estimation. In all 
ages of the Church we look for the highest 
spirituality and purity, and the most devout 
reverence toward the Father, where Jesus has 
been exalted ; and the most ardent love to 



152 Love Enthroned. 

Christ where this item of the creed has been 
emphasized and explained, "I believe in the 
Holy Ghost." Turning to the Scriptures, we 
find that the highest honor accruing to the 
Father is when men honor his Son. To him 
shall every knee bow, to the glory of God the 
Father. But Jesus is not fully known till the 
Spirit shows him to our hearts and glorifies 
him. No man can call Jesus Lord, but by the 
Holy Ghost. Thus each brightening dispensa- 
tion reflects honor upon the Divine person of 
the preceding, demonstrating that the Divine 
Persons are not independent and rival deities, 
but one in nature and essence, whose different 
perfections are more clearly manifested to a 
world of sinners by this threefold development. 
The superiority of the ministrations of the 
Spirit, and its immeasurable wealth of privi- 
lege when contrasted with the dispensation of 
the Son of God in his bodily presence, is ex- 
pressed by Jesus when he asserts that among 
them that are born of women there hath not 
arisen a greater than John the Baptist. Here 
the wilderness preacher is lifted to a pedestal 
higher than that of David the king, Moses the 
lawgiver, or Abraham the founder of the He- 



The Three Dispensations. 153 

brew nation. Yet he that is least in the king- 
dom of heaven is greater than he. We are to 
understand the kingdom of heaven as St. Paul 
expounds it, consisting of righteousness, peace, 
and joy in the Holy Ghost. It did not consist 
in seeing the incarnate Lord, for John saw 
him ; nor in gazing on his miraculous works 
and listening to his Divine utterances, as did 
many unbelieving Jews ; nor in being num- 
bered among his disciples, as were many who 
went away and walked no more with him ; nor 
in being enrolled among the twelve apostles, 
as was Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. Je- 
sus must have referred to that fullness of spir- 
itual grace and power brought in on the day 
of pentecost, to be the permanent inheritance 
of all who fully believe the promise of the 
Father. 

Every soul, however ignorant and uncul- 
tured, which is a habitation of God through the 
Spirit — every human body which is made a 
temple of the Holy Ghost, however weak and 
deformed, is greater than he whom the infal- 
lible Messiah pronounced superior to all his 
predecessors. Such a person may the reader 
be if he will by faith enter into the dispensa- 



154 Love Enthroned, 

tion of the blessed Comforter, far more glo* 
rious than the days when the visible form of 
Jesus shed its radiance on the earth. " It is 
expedient — better — for you that I go away; 
for if I go not away, the Comforter will not 
come." " Of which salvation the prophets 
have inquired, testifying beforehand of the suf- 
ferings of Christ, and the glory that should fol- 
low'' Reader, is that glory enrobing your 
spirit with a vesture of light, so that you are 
walking in the light toward the inheritance of 
the saints in light ? A dispensation laden with 
.such wealth of privilege carries with it a cor- 
responding burden of responsibility. Light is 
the measure of accountability. Who of the 
modern Church, illumined by the sevenfold 
splendors of the Spirit of truth, will be able to 
abide the fires of the judgment ? Would that 
these solemn words of Fletcher were sounded 
from every pulpit in Christendom : " To reject 
the Son of God, manifested in the Spirit, as 
worldly Christians are universally observed to 
do, is a crime of equal magnitude with that of 
the Jews, who rejected Christ manifested in 
the flesh." 

There are multitudes of nominal Christians 



The Three Dispensations. 155 

who confidently assert that it is the highest 
presumption and folly to expect, in modern 
times, that full dispensation of the Spirit con- 
cerning which so many excellent things are 
spoken in the Scriptures. They brand as a 
fanatic the man who proclaims to a slumber- 
ing Church the presence of the Holy Ghost, 
ready to raise the spiritually dead, and to trans- 
figure the spiritually living. It is asserted that 
the era of miracles and the extraordinary gifts 
of the Spirit are past ; not understanding that 
the Spirit itself is entirely distinct from his 
supernatural gifts. The Spirit descended upon 
Mary, the mother of our Lord, and upon sev- 
eral other believing women in the upper cham- 
ber ; but there is no proof that they were en- 
dowed with the gift of tongues, or any other 
charisma. St. Paul himself was not always re- 
plenished with miraculous power. A man may 
be full of the Holy Spirit, and be a temple 
for his abode, and have no supernatural gift. 
Love supreme, love made perfect, is superior 
to all the miraculous endowments. Though I 
have all faith, so that I could remove mount- 
ains, and have not love, I am nothing. Wit- 
ness Balaam's supernatural prophecy, followed 



156 Love Enthroned. 

by his violent death among the enemies of God, 
and the miracles of Judas, quickly succeeded 
by treason to his Master and wretched suicide. 
Another objection which men at ease in Zion 
raise against the universal outpouring of the 
Spirit in these days is the fanaticism which it 
is supposed to breed. This would exclude all 
spiritual life from the world ; for life is liberty, 
and all liberty has its perils. The prisoners, 
handcuffed in grated cells, and the dead in si- 
lent tombs, are the only two classes of people 
who are not in peril of the abuse of their physi- 
cal powers and appetites. That more fanatics 
and eccentrics start up in a Church filled and 
thrilled with spiritual life than in a Church in 
a Laodicean stupor, is no more wonderful than 
that a free country should give birth to more 
who abuse their freedom, than an autocratic 
iron despotism, where none dare to stir. Look 
at the Roman Catholic Church, where not a 
breath of spiritual life can be drawn unless it is 
according to the decrees of the hierarchy, and 
every pulsation is under the jealous surveil- 
lance of the priesthood. The fanaticism of 
ecclesiasticism, of ritualism, of papacy, of 
Mariolatry, of indulgences, of penances and 



The Three Dispensations. 157 

pilgrimages, may flourish there, but not the fa- 
naticism of unscriptural notions concerning the 
Holy Spirit. For the Holy Ghost as the wit- 
ness of pardon, the author of purity, and the 
guide of life, comes into collision with the 
claims of the priesthood. So the Holy Ghost 
must be imprisoned in the apostolic age, and 
the Bible must be chained in the cloister or 
burned up, because it promotes independent 
thought and spiritual freedom. Give us a 
spiritual Protestantism, with all its perils of 
rationalism and fanaticism, in preference to the 
intellectual stupor and spiritual death of such 
a system. We must make our election between 
these two. Though there maybe occasionally 
a weak or unbalanced mind carried away into 
fantastic extravagances under the copious effu- 
sion of the Holy Spirit, as a mighty rushing 
wind, the average mind has skill to adjust its 
sails to the heavenly gale, and speed its way, 
with stable ballast, toward the port of eternal 
life. Come, O wind ! O breath of God ! upon 
myriads of becalmed souls, and sweep them 
joyfully onward to the haven of rest. 

Let us now set up a safeguard against an 
abuse of the doctrine of this chapter respect- 



158 Love Enthroned. 

ing the three dispensations. If men can be 
saved by attaining perfection in any one of 
them, it may be inferred that we may take our 
choice. Not so. God controls this matter. 
He allots our place of birth, our education, 
and surroundings. If it be a pagan country, 
under the starlight of natural religion, the dis- 
pensation of the Father, with no distinctive 
knowledge of Jesus Christ, we shall be required 
to be perfect according to the low standard of 
gentilism. The ground on which the heathen 
man will be condemned will not be the imper- 
fectness of his life alone, but the fact that his 
life falls below his creed, poor as that may be. 
To him the Judge will say, "Ye knew your 
duty, but ye did it not. You had little light, 
but you shut your eyes, and refused to use 
what you had." The moralist, living in Chris- 
tendom, cannot plead the perfection of pagan- 
ism. This is a standard far below his degree 
of light. The sunrise of Christ's incarnation 
is upon him, showing the path of Chris- 
tian duty — love supreme to God in his Son, 
in addition to a perfect morality. Alas ! how 
many will fail at this point. As Capernaum, 
blessed with the presence, sermons, and mira~ 



The Three Dispensations. 159 

cles of Christ, all misimproved, sinks down in 
the judgment day below Sodom and Gomorrah, 
so will the impenitent of Christian lands, with 
the Bible in his hands — that lamp from off 
God's throne cast down to earth, lighting up 
their habitations, making the way of Christian 
rectitude luminous as a path of light before 
their feet — sink down under a weight of guilt 
when the pagan nations shall rise up to con- 
demn them. 

Thus the nominal Christian who reads in 
the Acts of the Apostles of the dispensation 
of the Spirit more glorious than that of the 
Son of God, and hears from God's embassador 
that it is his privilege and duty to be filled 
with the Spirit, and hears the attestations 
of unimpeached witnesses that the blessed 
Spirit of adoption has certified to their par- 
don, renewed and purified their natures, can- 
not innocently reject the ministration of the 
Holy Spirit, because it will cost him a painful 
effort of repentance, surrender, consecration, 
and faith to reach this high spiritual altitude. 
Formalism, ceremonialism, and mere ortho- 
doxy, cannot save him. 



160 Love Enthroned* 



CHAPTER X. 

PERFECT LOVE AS A DEFINITE BLESSING. 

IT took four thousand years to unroll the 
scroll of the sacred Scriptures — "to import 
God into knowledge/' in the phrase of Dr. 
Bushnell. The patriarchal and Jewish dispen- 
sations were occupied by the disclosure and 
ineradicable inculcation of the Divine unity 
upon one nation amid surrounding polytheism. 
To have taught the trinal personality of God, 
before the firm establishment of his oneness 
of substance, might have overtasked mankind 
in the period of their early theological pupil- 
age. The first words taught to every child 
in the Jewish nursery for more than three 
thousand years are these : " Hear, O Israel, 
the Lord our God is one Lord." Faith in this 
truth, such as inspired obedience, was saving 
under the dispensations before Christianity. 
It is saving now to all who have no higher 
revelation. What need, then, have we of any 
clearer and more definite manifestation of the 



Perfect Love as a Definite Blessing. 161 

nature of God ? Why should he reveal the 
unthinkable fact of his threefold personality, 
and require our faith to mount to heights so 
far above reason ? This is a question which 
the angels might well approach with bashful 
tread. It is certain that he has not taken me 
into his counsels. Here I walk by faith. Faith 
says that the higher revelation of God, and 
the new requirement of faith in the Trinity, 
proceed from the gracious purpose to bestow 
richer blessings upon the believer in a dispen- 
sation " rather glorious/' Such is the nature 
of the human soul, and probably of all finite 
spirits, that faith creates and measures its ca- 
pacity for spiritual good. By this gateway 
alone does God enter. Hence it follows that 
he would make an advanced revelation of 
himself, requiring a higher upreaching of faith, 
when he should purpose to fill us with his 
fullness. It will not now be sufficient to be- 
lieve in one God, as do the trembling demons. 
The Son of God, Jesus Christ, in his offices 
of prophet or teacher, priest and king, and 
the Holy Ghost, as our regenerator, spirit 
of adoption, and sanctifier, must be specific- 
ally grasped by our faith. Hence we should 
11 



1 62 Love Enthroned. 

look for little spirituality where these distinct, 
ive truths of the Gospel are little preached, and 
for much spiritual power and deep religious 
experience where they are distinctly taught and 
received with the least intermixture of error, 
and without disproportionate emphasis upon 
ritualism. Church history will sustain this as- 
sertion. There is always a spiritual decline 
whenever Christ and the Holy Spirit have a 
secondary place in preaching ; and there is 
always a revival when the " whole counsel of 
God," the Father, Son, and Spirit, is faithfully 
presented in the pulpit. Of many individual 
believers it may be truthfully said that their 
spiritual life is feeble and sickly because they 
fail to grasp Christ and the Comforter in all 
their distinct offices. Thousands are faintly 
moving, with languid steps, along the heaven- 
ward path, who might run with gladness, sur- 
mounting every obstacle and overthrowing 
every foe by their resistless momentum, if they 
would only persistently endeavor to "know the 
exceeding greatness of Christ's power to us-ward 
who believe." Thousands of sincere souls are 
harassed and weakened by perpetual doubts, 
simply because they do not render due honor 



Perfect Love as a Definite Blessing, 163 

to the third person of the Trinity by trusting 
him to do the work of his office, certifying their 
sonship by " the spirit of adoption." They do 
not stir themselves up to take hold of this 
blessed assurance, and to insist that the Di- 
vine seal be impressed upon them by the Holy 
Ghost. They live in constant disregard of the 
second pungent inference from Wesley's sermon 
on the Witness of the Spirit, "Let none rest in 
any supposed fruit of the Spirit without the 
witness." The natural consequence of this ab- 
sence of " the spirit of adoption, crying in their 
hearts, Abba, Father," is a perpetual oscillation 
between hope and fear, sorrowfully singing : — 

" *Tis a point I long to know ; 

Oft it causeth anxious thought, 
Do I love the Lord, or no ; 
Am I his, or am I not? " 

Instead of this they might be exultingly 
singing : — 

" O love, thou bottomless abyss ! 

My sins are swallowed up in thee ; 
Covered is my unrighteousness, 

Nor spot of guilt remains on me : 
While Jesus' blood, through earth and skies, 
Mercy, free, boundless mercy, cries." 

I am convinced that this unsatisfactory and 
unmethodistic experience, too prevalent in our 



1 64 Love Enthroned. 

Churches, is chargeable in part to the failure 
of our preachers to specialize this blessing, the 
common privilege of all believers. Hear Mr. 
Wesley : " Generally, wherever the Gospel is 
preached in a clear and scriptural manner, 
more than ninety-nine in a hundred do know 
the exact time when they are justified/' This 
is the testimony of a man more competent, 
from personal observation, to express a reliable 
opinion than any since the apostolic age, for 
he visited all his Societies annually, and met 
them in class, and put to each member search- 
ing test questions which went into the very 
core of his being. That was the style of class- 
leading in his day. But no such proportion 
of conversions, with the direct witness, now 
obtains at our altars. The failure is not in the 
Gospel, which is a changeless stream of power 
emanating from the living Christ, " the same 
yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." Where, 
then, is the failure? Let every preacher ex- 
amine his sermons, and see whether he has 
made "the spirit of adoption" conspicuous in 
his ministry. 

Another office of the Spirit is that of puri- 
fication. He is the Sanctifier. Beginning this 



Perfect Love as a Definite Blessing. 165 

work in the new birth by implanting love to 
God, the purifying principle, he continues it 
until perfect love casteth out fear. That this 
consummation may take place long before 
death, has never been a disputed question 
with Methodists. That it was specialized by 
their great founder, with increasing emphasis, 
till his dying day, no man on the earth 
can candidly deny, after reading "Tyerman's 
Life and Times of John Wesley.*' That this 
magnifying of the office of the Sanctifier pro- 
duced such Christian characters as Bramwell, 
Hester Ann Rogers, the seraphic Fletcher, 
and his saintly wife, and many others unknown 
to fame, but precious jewels in the crown of 
Jesus, is as certain as the sequence of any 
effect after its cause. 

These results were not the work of chance. 
There was a distinctive faith which grasped 
this prize. This faith came from preaching 
which honored the Sanctifier by dwelling em- 
phatically upon his office, and not by the use 
of "glittering generalities " gliding smoothly 
over it like a slurred note in music. It must 
be borne in mind that the Holy Spirit is the 
most sensitive person of the Godhead. If bias- 



166 Love Enthroned. 

phemy against him is unpardonable, the slight- 
ing of any of his offices must not only grieve 
him, but also deprive the soul of the blessings 
which it is his prerogative to bestow. " Grieve 
not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are 
sealed unto the day of redemption.*' 



The Fruits of Perfect Love. 167 



CHAPTER XL 

THE FRUITS OF PERFECT LOVE. 
§ 1. The Joy of the Abiding Comforter. 

THE Gospel is glad tidings of great joy. 
It was an outgush of song in a sad world 
— a burst of sunshine after ages of darkness. 
Paganism to-day is not jubilant, but gloomy 
and despondent. When, in a Christian land, 
any class of people discard Christ, their songs 
die out because their joy has withered. Spir- 
itualism has no exultant songs because it has no 
gladness in Jesus. It may gather in the tented 
grove, under the inspiration of waving trees, 
singing birds, verdant fields, glittering stars, 
and azure skies, but it confesses that it cannot 
counterfeit the Christian psalmody which rolls 
down the ages, lifting the heart of the believer 
nearer to God. Mormonism, in her mountain- 
girded valley, sits songless. The habitations 
of Utah are gladdened by no melodious praise 
warbled from human lips. Travelers remark 



1 68 Love Enthroned. 

this dearth of song in a land smiling with plen- 
ty. The explanation is easy. There is no 
Holy Ghost in their religion. It sows to the 
flesh and not to the spirit. Free Religion as- 
sembles in conventions, and argues, denounces, 
and blasphemes; but when she tries to sing, 
her voice is like the gibbering of a ghost in a 
sepulcher. 

Christ Jesus glorified in the soul by the Holy 
Ghost, is the fountain of true joy. The king- 
dom of God is " righteousness, peace, and joy 
in the Holy Ghost." When the blessed Com- 
forter fills the hearts of a people with his 
joy-inspiring presence, they burst out into 
spontaneous singing. But where formalism, 
worldliness, and unbelief have crowded the 
Comforter out of their hearts, they pay thou- 
sands of dollars to a quartette to perform the 
service which their backslidden souls refuse to 
render. Hence joy is a very good test, not 
only of orthodox opinions, but of the strength 
of our faith in Christian truth, and our personal 
devotion to Christ. But not all joy is Chris- 
tian. Joys may be classified as, i) unnatural, 
2) natural, 3) supernatural. The first is the 
exhilaration resulting from the application of 



The Fruits of Perfect Love. i6g 

stimulants to the nervous system. Lord Ba- 
con credits drunkenness with intense pleasure. 
This is the secret of the fatal fascination of the 
cup. It awakens a delirious, evanescent, and 
fatal joy, which momentarily lifts up the soul 
to ecstatic heights, and then plunges it into 
the depths of despair. The day-dreams of the 
opium eater, and the serene composure of the 
slave to tobacco, belong to the class of unnat- 
ural and injurious delights. The joy which 
ends in the scorpion's sting must be ranked 
as the lowest in the scale of rational satisfac- 
tions. Yet all nations and generations have 
plucked this apple of Sodom and tasted its 
ashes. 

2.) There is a mere animal joy which flows 
from the healthful condition of the body. The 
animal spirits overflow in their exuberance. 
The lambs frisk upon the sunny hillside, and 
the horse, in the very fullness of life, prances 
through the pasture with arched neck and nim- 
ble foot. So men may be joyful by reason of 
their good physical condition. There may be 
not only "no rebellion when the stomach is 
full," but there may be an outflowing stream of 
animal joy. Higher than this is the gladness of 



170 Love Enthroned. 

worldly success, when the corn and the wine 
increase, the joy of sordid gain, the joy of the 
miser, the joy of the harvest. Above this is 
the intellectual triumph of the student, the 
gladness incident to the victories of mind, the 
solution of a mathematical problem, or the 
discovery of the missing truth which was nec- 
essary in order to convert an hypothesis into a 
science. Still higher is ethical joy, the approval 
of a good conscience pronouncing on a good 
action. This is no small joy. It is all that 
many have to cheer their sojourn in this vale 
of tears. More excellent still is the gladness 
of beneficence, the joy of awakening gladness 
in another heart, or of mitigating another's 
sorrows. Many who are not Christians have 
learned the secret of this semi-Christian joy, 
and by a charitable use of money have opened 
fountains of felicity for themselves along their 
earthly path. All these kinds of joy are naU 
ural; they lie on the dead level of the plain of 
nature. They are transient, and limited to this 
world. 

3.) At the disparity of an infinite distance 

is the joy of the Holy Ghost. It is super* 
natural — an outgushing fountain from a rock 



The Fruits of Perfect Love. 171 

stricken by the rod of a greater than Moses. 
It is a joy not springing up in the course of 
nature, but handed down from heaven, and im- 
planted in the believing soul. It is really a 
miraculous spring opened by the Holy Spirit 
in the Sahara of the human breast. It may 
be surprising that the fullness of the Spirit is 
several times in the Scriptures contrasted with 
fullness of wine. " Be not drunk with wine, 
wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spir- 
it." Contrast always implies some point of 
likeness. This seems to consist in three facts : 
(1.) Exhilaration and elevation of feeling; 
(2.) Out of the course of nature ; and (3.) By an 
agent from without the man entering and ex- 
citing his sensibilities. The universal appe- 
tency of the fallen race of Adam for some ex- 
ternal stimulant argues the loss of the true ex- 
citant, the Holy Spirit, which filled the hearts 
of the unfallen pair with satisfying joy, just as 
He fills now all who regain the Eden of perfect 
love. Christian joy exists in every degree. 
There is the joy of penitence, described by the 
poet as " the sweet distress," " the pleasing 
smart." There follows the joy of conscious 
pardon — a radiant angel standing out on the 



172 Love Enthroned. 

dark background of condemnation like a thun- 
dercloud overcasting all the sky. The Spirit of 
adoption, crying in the heart, Abba, Father, is 
the source of gladness above the negative joy 
of forgiveness. Adoption is positive, and en- 
titles to heirship with Christ, But when we 
enter upon the fullness of the Spirit, in the 
words of Mr. Wesley, " it will feast our souls 
with such peace and joy in God as will blot 
out the remembrance of every thing that we 
called peace or joy before/' This is strong lan- 
guage, but it is justified by all who have been 
led to this banqueting house, and have read on 
the banner floating over them the new, best 
name of Love — Perfect Love. 

1 0, what a heaven of heavens is this, 
This swoon of silent love ! 
How poor the world's sublimest bliss 
Compared with joys above ! " 

To portray this bliss by words would be 
like representing the rainbow by a charcoal 
sketch. If the meagerness of human language 
fails to convey to a blind man the vastness of 
that ocean which lies in the hollow of the 
Creator's hand, how much more is its poverty 
seen when it attempts to set forth to an in- 



The Fruits of Perfect Love. 173 

experienced soul all the plenitude of God 
himself. 

No simple emotion of the soul can be indi- 
cated in any other way than by stating the 
circumstances under which it arises, as the 
sense of beauty in the presence of the rose, 
the feeling of sublimity where Niagara pours 
down its avalanche of waters before our eyes. 
The heart that has never felt the throb of love 
and the gladness that follows, as the shadow 
follows the substance, can never learn it from 
the most graphic writer in the whole range of 
literature. It is thus with the joy of the Holy 
Ghost in the fullness of his abiding presence. 
It differs from the joy of the justified, from the 
gladness of the adopted, in degree, if not in 
kind. These seem like gifts liable to decay, 
while the joy of the Divine fullness is the pos- 
session of the Giver — the perennial fountain of 
all blessedness. Jesus intimated to the woman 
begging the mysterious water which he had, 
that she might not only taste but carry away 
the well with her. " But the water which I will 
give you shall be in you a well of water spring- 
ing up to everlasting life." This promise, 
rightly interpreted, is, that the love to Christ 



174 Love Enthroned. 

and the attendant joy shall become ingrained, 
inherent in the fully believing soul as a second 
nature ; faith, love, and joy becoming as nat- 
ural and involuntary as breathing. Hence 
permanence is a marked characteristic of per- 
fect love. Mr. Wesley was fifty-five years old 
before he became " thoroughly convinced that 
it is amissible, capable of being lost." 

Yet our discussion of this theme would not 
be exhaustive, if several grave errors were not 
marked by buoys for the benefit of future 
voyagers on this sea. 

i. Do not seek joy. Seek not the gift but 
the Giver. There is a subtle selfishness in cry- 
ing for joy. If you receive the Giver you will 
insure all his gifts. But beware lest you fix 
your eye on the gift aside from the Giver. 
" God is a jealous God." He must be sought 
for his own infinite worthiness. The penitent 
sinner may find the gift of forgiveness while 
imploring this, without a distinct apprehension 
of the supreme excellence of the Divine char- 
acter. His sins rise like mountains and fill 
all the field of his vision. Nor has he had 
that spiritual discipline which has disclosed to 
him the absolute purity of God in contrast 



The Fruits of Perfect Love. 175 

with his inward depravity. But the believer 
has had such a flood of light poured by the 
Spirit upon his own inherent vileness and the 
spotless holiness of God, that, in his further 
approaches, he must be attracted by the in- 
comparable beauty of his character, and not by 
any mere gift at his disposal. He must utterly 
renounce all selfish motives and cry, 

14 Suffice that for the season past 

Myself in things divine I sought ; 
For comforts cried with eager haste, 

And munnured that I found them not. 
I leave it now to thee alone ; 
Father, thy only will be done ! 

" Thy gifts I clamor for no more, 
Nor selfishly thy grace require, 

An evil heart to varnish o'er ; 
Jesus, the Giver, I desire, 

After the flesh no longer known ; 

Father, thy only will be done ! n 

Having anchored a buoy on a rock on which 
many have struck in attempting to sail into 
the harbor of perfect love, we proceed to place 
another on a rock which lies in the very har- 
bor itself. 

2. Do not imagine that the sudden subsidence 
of ecstatic joy is the withdrawal of the abiding 
Comforter. You retain him by faith and not 



176 Love Enthroned. 

by feeling. The highest Christian experience 
is subject to variations. Joy, like the tide, 
ebbs and flows. There are times when the 
soul, without effort, apprehends the love of 
God, and joy unspeakable fills, floods, and 
overwhelms it. Suddenly this bright mani- 
festation is withdrawn, while no testimony of 
the Spirit is left behind against any act of ours 
as the cause. While there is no cloud nor 
doubt, there is no direct assurance. All is a 
waveless, breathless calm. Then is the time to 
walk by the lamp of faith, since the sunlight 
of the direct and joyful witness of God's love 
is withdrawn. Beware lest you admit the 
thought that the fullness of God has left you 
with the cessation of the exultant joy of the 
Holy Spirit. These alternations of feeling are 
doubtless regulated by hidden but benevolent 
laws. They may be requisite for the develop- 
ment of higher faith, when the soul, humbled 
and hungering, cries out, 

" My heartstrings groan with deep complaint, 
My flesh lies panting, Lord, for thee." 

These inexplicable vacations of the mani- 
festation of Divine love may be necessary for 
the more deliberate examination of our hearts, 



The Fruits of Perfect Love. 177 

As the careful engineer occasionally stops his 
train in order to click the wheels and prove 
their soundness, so God may at times inter- 
rupt the current of conscious love, to afford us 
an appropriate occasion for spiritual introspec- 
tion. The man who walks by faith through 
these intervals will soon find even a clearer 
and more joyful outbeaming of the Saviour's 
countenance to reward his faithful clinging to 
the Divine promise. 

To these cautions an objection may arise in 
the mind of the reader that we are encouraged 
by Christ to ask for joy when he says, "Ask 
and receive, that your joy may be full." The 
evident design of the Lord Jesus is to indicate 
one of the blissful consequences of the prayer of 
faith, rather than its direct aim. Seek ME, and 
as an incidental result, your joy will be full. 
Seek ye first the kingdom of God, not in order 
that food and raiment may be added unto you ; 
but "all these things shall be added," as an 
incidental consequence. Another objection is 
urged, derived from the example of the Son 
of God, " who for the joy that was set before 
him endured the cross, despising the shame, 

and is set down at the right hand of the throne 
12 



i78 Love Enthroned. 

of God." Heb. xii, 2. If Jesus made his own 
joy the highest end of his actions and suffer- 
ings, may not his followers, who are com- 
manded to walk in his steps ? This objection 
is answered by recourse to the original, where 
we find avn y " instead of," in place of " for," 
the joy. This reading represents the Son of 
God, when the alternative was before him of 
sharing with the Father the worship of angels, 
and enjoying the glory which he had with the 
Father before the world was, or of enduring 
the abasement of the incarnation and the suf- 
ferings of Gethsemane and Calvary, as delib- 
erately choosing the cross " instead of the joy 
which was lying before him " as his inheritance 
in the immediate future. As Jesus chose the 
will of God, and not his own will or selfish joy, 
so are we to walk in his steps, and to pray, 
not beatify myself, but glorify thyself, O thou 
adorable Saviour! While it is true that we 
cannot act in utter disregard of our own hap- 
piness, it is also true that we may have a 
conception of Christ so exalted, and a faith in 
him so strong, as to identify our joy with his, 
assured that our highest delight will be con- 
served while we aim not at it, but at the glory 



The Fruits of Perfect Love. 179 

of the Lamb, who is worthy of all honor, and 
glory, and blessing. 

§ 2. The Tongue Unloosed. 

A confessing mouth always attends a believ- 
ing heart. Asfn the world of matter occult forces 
manifest themselves in their effects, so in the 
world of mind an unloosed tongue is the infal- 
lible result of the hidden Transformer, the 
Holy Spirit. "Come and hear, all ye that fear 
God, and I will declare what he hath done for 
my soul/' This declaration, constantly put 
forth by living men, is a perpetual testimonial 
to the spiritual medicine advertised in the 
word of God. A specific held up before the 
public from year to year, unaccompanied by 
attested cures, comes to be distrusted and neg- 
lected. Hence even the blood of sprinkling, 
potent to cleanse the heart from all unright- 
eousness, needs something more than the ad- 
vertisement of the inspired penman ; it needs 
the joyful voice of the healed leper, crying, " It 
hath cleansed me ! " The aggressive, conquer- 
Ing power of Christ in this fallen world, and his 
final triumph over " Satan, who deceiveth the 
whole world/' depend upon the agency of his 



i8o Love Enthroned. 

friends. "And they overcame him by (on ac- 
count of) the blood of the Lamb and the word 
of their testimony" Without the blood of the 
Lamb they could not have answered the ac- 
cuser, and without their testimony they could 
not have retained the witness of the Spirit that 
" Jesus died for me, and that he shed his blood 
for even me, and that all my sins are blotted out 
and my nature is renewed.*' Without both 
the blood of the Lamb and the word of the 
testimony the victory cannot be ours ; both 
together form its ground. It is evident that 
the testimony is to be equal in extent to the 
cure. Pardon and regeneration experienced 
are to be attested also. The destruction of 
inbred sin and the fullness of the Divine life 
apprehended within are to be attested for the 
benefit of those still beneath the yoke, and for 
the glory of the great Emancipator. The 
chief motive to confession is to glorify Christ. 
If we have not a blessing, it is preposterous to 
profess in order to receive. It is selfish to 
profess any state of grace in order to retain it. 
He who loves Jesus Christ with all the intenr 
sity of a sanctified heart will feel a might) 
constraint to confess him for his own sake. 



The Fruits of Perfect Love. 181 

There are few, if any, explicit professions 
of holiness or of Christian perfection in the 
Holy Scriptures. We search in vain for such 
testimonies as these : " I am holy ; " "I am 
sanctified ;" " I am perfect." Even the sinless 
Son of man, who could rightfully make these 
explicit declarations, chose other ways of pro- 
fessing his spotless purity and faultless perfec- 
tion. Jesus implies his holiness when he puts 
to the caviling Jews the interrogatory, " Which 
of you convinceth me of sin ? ' and when he 
describes himself as one whom the Father hath 
sanctified and sent into the world, he said, " I 
and my Father are one." He asserted his 
absolute perfection without giving needless of- 
fense. He avoided all appearance of boast- 
fulness. St. Paul's professions of entire sanc- 
tification, after the same style, are implied and 
not explicit. To the Thessalonians he says, 
"Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily 
and justly and unblamably we behaved our- 
selves among you that believe." " For your- 
selves know how ye ought to follow us ; for we 
behaved ourselves not disorderly among you." 
To Felix he declares, " Herein do I exercise 
myself, to have always a conscience void of 



1 82 Love Enthroned. 

offense toward God and many He says to the 
Church in Corinth, u Our rejoicing is this, the 
testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity 
and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, 
but by the grace of God, we have had our con- 
versation (dvearpd(j)7]iJLev y conducted ourselves) in 
the world. Giving no offense in any thing, but 
in all things approving ourselves as the minis- 
ters of God, by pureness, by the Holy Ghost, 
by the armor of righteousness on the right 
hand and on the left." " We have wronged 
no man." To Timothy, who had been most 
intimately associated with him in public and 
private — no man is a hero to his valet de 
chambre — he confidently appeals, " But thou 
hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, 
purity, faith, long-suffering, love, and patience." 
But the most remarkable implication of the 
attainment of the higher life is found in his 
letter to the Philippians, wherein, after dis- 
claiming the perfection of the resurrection, he 
admits that he had attained unto the evan- 
gelical perfection of love. " Let us therefore 
as many as be perfect, be thus minded. Breth- 
ren, be ye followers, imitators, together of me, 
and mark them which walk so as ye have us 



The Fruits of Perfect Love. 183 

for an ensample, for our conversation (jroXiTevfia^ 
citizenship) is in heaven. Rendering the plural 
us and our by me and my y as in Conybeare's 
version, what have we here but the declaration 
that the character of St. Paul as an ensam- 
ple is, in purity of purpose and manifestation, 
like that of the angels in heaven, who per- 
fectly do the will of God ? " Imitate me, 
for I, amid innocent infirmities and thorns 
in the flesh, am living the life of a citizen of 
heaven." 

St. John most plainly implies his own purity 
when he says, " Truly our fellowship is with 
the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. " 
That this implies holiness is evident from the 
fact of God's holiness, with whom there is a 
participation. But John does not leave this 
subject without adding the statement, " If we 
say that we have fellowship with him, and walk 
in darkness, (that is, sin,) we lie." It is difficult 
to resist the inference that St. John records his 
own experience and spiritual attainments in 
such hypothetical sentences as these : " If we 
confess our sins, he is faithful and just to for- 
give us our sins, and to cleanse us from all un- 
righteousness." " If we walk in the light, as he 



1 84 Love Enthroned. 

is in the light, we have fellowship one with 
another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son 
cleanseth us from all sin." " But whoso keep- 
eth his word, in him verily is the love of God 
perfected." St. John was not a theorizer, but 
a practical man. He speaks out of the depths 
of his own experience when he says, " Every 
man that hath this hope in him purifieth him- 
self, even as he (Christ) is pure." St. John 
must have had a heart perfectly free from con- 
demnation, and hence from inward sin, or he 
could not have known the blissful conse- 
quences, " confidence toward God," and the 
ability to pray in such faith as "to receive 
whatsoever we ask of him." I John iii, 20-22. 
" He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, 
and God in him. Herein is our love made 
perfect, because as he is so we are in this 
world!' " Perfect love casteth out fear." 
This cannot be the conclusion of a syllogism, 
nor of any logical process, but the utterance 
of a heart made glad by love so strong as 
to bind the strong man, fear, and cast him out 
forever. 

St. Peter's implied profession of entire sane- 
tification is found in such expressions as, " Kept 



The Fruits of Perfect Love. 185 

by the power of God through faith unto salva- 
tion." " Whereby are given unto us exceeding 
great and precious promises, that by these ye 
might be partakers of the divine nature" It 
is certain that Peter was not so inconsistent as 
to exhort others to climb to heights unsealed 
by himself, when he says, " Be diligent, that ye 
may be found of him in peace, without spot and 
blameless y 

§ 3. The Uplifted Vail. 

It is not by accident that, in the apostol- 
ic benediction, the communion of the Holy 
Ghost comes last. It is the crowning bless- 
ing of the Triune God. Without it the " grace 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God," 
could not be satisfactorily and joyfully known. 
These might exist as a matter of inference 
from the gracious dispositions and holy aspi- 
rations of the soul. They cannot be imme- 
diately known by a knowledge excluding all 
doubt, except as they are uncovered by the 
Holy Ghost. " He shall receive of mine and 
show it unto" you. " He shall testify of me." 
All views of Christ, without the Spirit's illu- 
mination, are mere cold, intellectual concep- 



1 86 Love Enthroned. 

tions, awakening by his moral beauty such 
esthetical emotions as arise when we gaze on 
the marble creations of Phidias or Angelo. 
To set the soul on fire with love as a consum- 
ing passion, this Christ must be brought into 
personal relations with me ; he must be re- 
vealed in me by a process wholly inexplicable, 
but affording absolute assurance, and joy un- 
speakable. " We have received, not the spirit 
of the world, but the spirit which is of God ; 
that we might know the things that are free- 
ly given us of God." No gracious attain- 
ment can be otherwise brought into con- 
sciousness in the soul of the believer. If the 
sins of the wicked man are set before him in 
terrific array, calling for the thunders of wrath 
Divine, it is the work of the Spirit. If the 
believer is freely justified through faith in 
Jesus Christ, the Spirit, as the carrier-dove of 
heaven, brings down to the condemned culprit 
the assurance of pardon. The same Spirit 
pours down light into the hidden depths of the 
soul after regeneration, and reveals the hid- 
eous deformities of a nature not yet wholly 
conformed to the pattern of Christ's spirit- 
ual beauty. Then, by a distinct exertion, he 



The Fruits of Perfect Love. 187 

fashions that soul into a form of Christlike 
symmetry and loveliness, and the great Trans- 
former reports his completed work to the con- 
sciousness as something " freely given to us of 
God." The conscious residence of the Holy 
Spirit within is the power which gives victory 
over sin. Sin, whether as an act or a state, 
cannot consist with the indwelling of the Holy 
Ghost. Hence he is called " the Sanctifier." 
They who hold daily communion with him 
walk the paths of the higher life. They are 
purified. For how can purity commune with 
impurity? Hence uninterrupted joyful com- 
munion of the Holy Ghost is Christian perfec- 
tion. Such a soul " rejoices evermore, prays 
without ceasing, and in every thing gives 
thanks." How many professed Christians are 
ignorant of this bliss ! 

" There is a great deal that is shadowy and 
dubious about the communion that many have 
with God. They have no such consciousness 
of having met and conversed with God, as they 
have of their communications with men. There 
has been no bright and animating manifesta- 
tion of God to their souls. They have not felt 
the power of his present majesty; nor have 



1 88 Love Enthroned. 

his Divine perfections taken hold upon them 
as by a special revelation. They know that 
God is revealed in his word as gracious and 
merciful toward the race of men ; but they 
have not considered that it is the province of 
faith to single out the believer, and bring him 
by himself into the presence of his Maker. 
He is to enter into peculiar and well-under- 
stood relations to God. God is his God ; he 
is the child of God ; and there must be a 
conscious acquaintance and intimacy quite 
distinct from the general goodness of God 
toward mankind. In order that we may 
draw nigh to God, we must become utterly 
dissatisfied with the vague sort of communion 
that so many are content with. We must re- 
solve to be satisfied with nothing less than 
the bright shining of the Divine presence 
upon our individual soul. We must believe 
it attainable, and resolve to attain it at what- 
ever cost. 

" Having begun to seek it earnestly, we shall 
perhaps experience many disappointments, 
The word of God unfolds itself, it is true, 
more richly to our souls than it once did, and 
we get juster conceptions of him. But the 



The Fruits of Perfect Love. 189 

bright and soul-elevating discovery of him 
himself, we do not obtain. The more we seek, 
however, the more we perceive the importance 
of what we seek, and feel that life without this 
conscious union of the soul with God, is insup- 
portable. We take this conviction as an en- 
couragement from on high, to go on. As we 
continue striving in prayer we are led to ex- 
amine ourselves earnestly to see if there is 
any thing in our way of life that is displeasing 
to God. We become very scrupulous, very 
severe with ourselves; we cut off one indul- 
gence here and another there, and wonder 
how we should have formerly been so careless. 
Duties that we had not formerly dreamed of, 
now discover themselves to us ; we find that 
we were before very ill-acquainted with the 
will of God. These discoveries perhaps only 
make us the more unhappy; for we feel that 
we need a strength such as we have not, in 
order to live the life we are called to. More 
and more we see the absolute necessity of 
drawing nigh to God and strengthening our- 
selves in the consciousness of our indissolu- 
ble union with him in Christ. Finally, in 
some hour long to be remembered, there falls 



190 Love Enthroned. 

down, as it were, a great vail, and with joy 
unspeakable we behold the light of God's 
countenance, and are made glad by the as- 
surance, deeply buried in the soul, that an 
Almighty Friend accompanies us along the 
journey of life." 

This quotation from that garden of spiritual 
delights, " Bowen's Daily Meditations," issued 
by the Presbyterian Publication Committee, 
most graphically describes the process of obtain- 
ing full salvation, while delineating the struggles 
of a believer to enter into communion face to 
face with God. The unrest and dissatisfaction, 
the search in the sacred oracles, the increasing 
hunger, the heart-searchings, the uncovering 
of sins before unknown, the surrender of in- 
dulgences, the consecration of all, the glimpses 
of the prize which makes all the world look 
cheap, further discoveries of corruption within, 
and the sense of utter helplessness and need 
of the Divine aid, all portray the pathway up 
to the plane called the Higher Life, while the 
sudden lifting of the vail fittingly describes 
the instantaneous uplift to that higher path 
where the " smile of the Lord is the feast of 
the soul." This search after, and discovery 



T/ie Fruits of Perfect Love. 191 

of, Peniel, the face of God, seen in open en- 
raptured vision, passes unchallenged in a de- 
votional book published for the use of a body 
of Christians who would lift up their hands 
in holy horror if the writer should substitute 
perfect love, or Christian perfection, for that 
communion with God just set forth as a distinct 
attainment by every earnest and persevering 
seeker. All the descriptions of high com- 
munion with God, whatever sectarian name 
they bear, are expositions of this great bless- 
ing by the use of different terms. The soul, 
fully resting in Christ, instantly recognizes 
the great blessing, in whatever guise it may 
appear. 

" The o'erwhelming power of saving grace, 
The sight that vails the seraph's face ; 
The speechless awe that dares not move, 
And all the silent heaven of love." 

To how many Christian souls is God vaile'd ! 
They have need to pray, " Hide not thy face 
from me." Many of these do not know that 
God is pleased to make communications of 
grace which shall be like the removal of a 
vail from the face of one beloved and adored. 
Such manifestations of grace to others are 



192 Love Enthroned. 

believed to be exceptional, that only a few 
persons of a peculiar and delicate spiritual 
organization can receive revelations of Christ's 
love ; whereas we are living in a dispensation 
in which more glorious unvailings of God to 
every believing soul are possible than was 
ever enjoyed by Enoch, Abraham, Isaiah, or 
Daniel. " The light of the moon has become 
as the light of the sun, and the light of the 
sun shall be sevenfold. " How shall not the 
ministration of the Spirit be rather glorious? 
This is our exalted privilege. What are the 
attainments of a majority of the modern 
Church ? Says Professor Phelps, " Much of 
even the ordinary language of Christians re- 
specting the joy of communion with God — 
language which is stereotyped in our dialect 
of prayer — many cannot honestly apply to 
the history of their own minds. A calm, fear- 
less self-examination finds no counterpart to 
it in any thing they have ever known. In the 
view of an honest conscience, it is not the 
vernacular speech of their experience. As 
compared with the joy which such language 
indicates, prayer is, in all that they know of it, 
a dull duty. Perhaps the characteristic of the 



The Fruits of Perfect Love. 193 

feelings of many about it is expressed in the 
single fact that it is to them a duty as dis- 
tinct from a privilege. It is a duty which 
they cannot deny, is often uninviting, even 
irksome. Yet God's ideal of communion with 
his saints is this, " I will make them joyful in 
my house of prayer." 

13 



194 Love Enthroned. 



CHAPTER XII. 

SALVATION FROM ARTIFICIAL APPETITES. 

JESUS once said, " If the Son, therefore, 
make you free, ye shall be free indeed." 
This emphatic " indeed " has in it a deep sig- 
nificance, fathomed only by those who have 
let down the sounding-line of experience into 
the depths of this wonderful freedom. These 
persons attest that they are not only delivered 
from a sense of guilt and a fear of its penalty ; 
not only from the dominion, but from the in- 
dwelling, of sin within their hearts. They are 
saved from sinning. They are freed not only 
from the willful violation of the known law 
of God, but also from the enslavement of 
their former tyrannical appetites. The pe- 
tition in that ancient formula of worship, the 
" Te Deum Laudamus" is answered every 
day of their lives — " Vouchsafe, O Lord, to 
keep us this day without sin." Millions of 
worshipers in liturgical Churches still offer 
this prayer every Lord's Day. They even go 



Salvation from Artificial Appetites. 195 

further than this. They pray that the thoughts 
of their hearts may be cleansed by the inspi- 
ration of the Holy Spirit, " that our souls may 
be washed through Christ's most precious 
blood, and that we may evermore dwell in 
him, and he in us." Even beyond this they 
pray "that our sinful bodies may be made 
clean through his most precious body." The 
Church for ages has prayed for cleansing from 
all filthiness of the flesh and spirit. Her mis- 
take has frequently been, in relying on the ef- 
ficacy of the sacraments instead of the power 
of the Holy Spirit through faith in the name 
of Jesus. Yet inward and outward holiness, 
unmixed and pure, has been aimed at in the 
prayers of the Church through all the Chris- 
tian ages. This is no mean argument, prov- 
ing that Jesus is able to deliver from those 
inward proclivities toward sin inhering in our 
bodies, which, like traitors within the gates. 
are a source of constant annoyance and peril. 
I refer not only to what is in theology called 
original sin, or depravity, but also to induced 
tendencies to sin resulting from pernicious ap- 
petites. All the philosophers, from Aristotle 
to Sir William Hamilton, insist that those 



196 Love Enthroned, 

qualities of our nature which have been pro- 
duced by habit are more invincible than those 
born in us. The Bible confirms it. The 
Ethiopian's skin and the leopard's spot symbol- 
ize, not the impossibility of eradicating natu- 
ral depravity, but acquired propensities to evil 
in those " accustomed to do evil." But there is 
salvation from even these. This deliverance is 
personal and not generic ; it includes the believ- 
er himself, and not his seed. I find no such de- 
liverance from depravity as would exempt the 
offspring of two such emancipated persons from 
sinful tendencies, and hence, possibly, from 
any need of atonement. Such a state of grace 
is found only in the dreams of fanatics, who 
are always going beyond what is written. 
There is abundant testimony that Jesus can 
emancipate from the degrading and enslaving 
yoke of artificial appetites under which uni- 
versal humanity groans. 

How difficult to break the fetters of the al- 
coholic or narcotic appetite ! Yet there are 
many who testify that through faith in Jesus 
Christ, they were in a moment set perfect- 
ly free from fleshly appetites which had en- 
slaved them for years ; that the grasp of 



Salvation from Artificial Appetites, 197 

those vile demons, opium and tobacco, after 
scores of years was instantly relaxed when the 
power of the almighty Emancipator was in- 
voked. The instantaneous victories of King 
Jesus over king alcohol are too numerous and 
too well attested to admit of doubt. As Jesus 
on earth delivered from every kind of disease, 
so from on high he delivers from every form 
of sin, saving to the uttermost all who come 
unto God by him. Since this cleansing of the 
flesh seems to involve an instantaneous phys- 
ical change, it comes very near to the miracu- 
lous. For this reason there is need of un- 
impeachable testimony to substantiate our 
statement. From the " Wonders of Grace," a 
tract by Rev. W. H. Boole, we quote the fol- 
lowing instances: — 

" A. C. has been for thirty years a member 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church ; for the 
greater part of this time a leader and trustee 
in a New York Church. His profession was 
always marked by correctness of deportment 
and generous zeal, while his cheerful manners 
won the esteem of all. But he had been ad- 
dicted to the constant use of tobacco for forty 
years, until its daily use had become seeming- 



198 Love Enthroned. 

Iy necessary to health, if not to life. He had 
made many efforts to rid himself of the doubt- 
ful practice, but always failed because of the 
inward gnawing which its long-continued use 
had created, and which forced him to begin 
the practice again. At last, on a certain occa- 
sion, in the presence of the writer, he said, ' I 
have long been seeking a deeper work of grace ; 
tobacco appears to hinder me ; but I had not 
supposed it possible to be saved from the 
dreadful power of this habit until now. Never 
before have I trusted Jesus to save me from 
the appetite as well as the use of it, but now 
I do/ and, suiting the action to the word, 
he threw far away from him the tobacco 
he held in his hand. He still lives, and for 
several years has reiterated this testimony: 
' From that hour all desire left nie, and I 
have ever since hated what I once so fondly 
loved/ " 

" i s a prominent member of the 

Methodist Episcopal Church in the city of 
Brooklyn, New York. For thirty- five years 
he has served the Church, giving liberally of 
his abundant means, and generally ready for 
every good word and work. From the age of 



Salvation from Artificial Appetites. 199 

ten he had used tobacco, until the habit had 
become so deeply rooted he could not endure 
to be without a cigar in his mouth, frequently 
rising in the night to ' have a good smoke.* 
During the thirty years of this manner of life 
he often felt the bondage of the habit, and re- 
solved against it, but his resolutions invariably 
failed him. About three years since he be- 
came deeply interested in the subject of full 
salvation, and began diligently seeking for its 
possession. While pondering what might be 
the difficulties in the way, he saw that this 
very doubtful and slavish habit was a bar to 
his advancement ; but so earnest was he for 
the prize of a clean heart, that he felt alto- 
gether willing to yield up the indulgence if it 
were possible. But was it so? He had fought 
against the passion long and well, yet not once 
had he conquered. Who would deliver him 
from the body o f this death ? It was a new idea 
to him that Jesus saves from the appetite and 
lust of sin as well as from the act ; that he gives 
strength not only to strive against but to destroy 
the power of habit. But no sooner did he ap- 
prehend this gospel truth, and read his privi- 
lege in the wonderful promise, ' He is able to 



200 Love Enthroned. 

save them to the uttermost/ than he, all alone, 
one evening cast himself on Jesus' word, and 
trusted him to do it for him. 'Twas done. 
Not an hour longer did the desire remain ; and 
his uniform testimony has ever since been, 
' It is strange to me that I ever loved the filthy 
practice.' " 

Mr. Boole testifies, " More than a score of 
examples equally interesting I have witnessed 
in one year, all occurring in the same commu- 
nity." The author of this book has conversed 
with several eminently pious men who were in- 
stantaneously delivered from the narcotic ap- 
petite, one of whom had been a confirmed 
drunkard, and had twenty years before been 
delivered in a similar manner from the alco- 
holic appetite with no subsequent return of the 
unclean spirits. 

But a more dreadful chain is the opium 
habit in the various forms of its use. In the 
attempt to leave it off the devotee suffers un- 
utterable agonies. It seems as though a vol- 
cano was rending his bowels. His will-power 
is destroyed. Few indeed, without supernat- 
ural aid, ever break this yoke. Some, in the 
blackness of despair, have committed suicide. 



Salvation from Artificial Appetites. 20 1 

Multitudes increase the dose till nature at 
last succumbs, and the wretched victim dies 
with a sense of guilt burning the soul. We 
quote from the same authority. 

" Near the town of Westbrook, Connecticut, 
there lived an aged woman, seventy-two years 
old, well known in the community as the * old 
opium eater/ who had lived in the daily use 
of large quantities of this drug for more than 
twenty-two years. Her daily allowance was 
enough to destroy the lives of twenty persons 
not addicted to the habit. Whether she ever 
had made any previous attempts to break 
away from the baneful practice, we know not ; 
but, on a certain day, the writer visited her in 
company with a brother minister stationed in 
the town. The subject of her opium eating 
was introduced, and a close and faithful discus- 
sion of the moral aspects of the case followed. 
The sin of the habit was clearly and unhesita- 
tingly exposed, and her unsaved and perilous 
condition, so far advanced in years, boldly but 
gently pronounced. Then Christ was pre- 
sented, able to save to the uttermost — to save 
from the guilt and the passion of her sinful in- 
dulgence. She had listened with evident in. 



202 Love Enthroned. 

terest, and the Holy Spirit was without doubt 
breathing deep conviction into her soul. As 
the last objection to seeking Jesus now y trust- 
ing in him alone to do all for her, was an- 
swered, and the last prop of self-righteousness 
removed, this aged sinner, nearly double with 
years and a confirmed habit of iron strength, 
kneeled down with us to ask Divine mercy 
and help. While thus engaged in prayer, ' im- 
mediately ' the desire left her, and she knew 
in herself that she was free from that plague. 
The bright Divine evidence of her acceptance 
was not received, according to her testimony, 
until two weeks afterward ; yet the desire for 
opium did not in the interval return, and she 
lived for two years a happy witness of the ' ut- 
termost ' power of Christ to save. Her un- 
wavering testimony to the end was, ' I am no 
more troubled with any desire for opium than 
if I had never sinned in the use of it. Jesus 
saves me/ " 

We condense one more case from the same 
author : — 

" , the subject of this sketch, lives 

in Brooklyn, New York. While under treat- 
ment for a broken leg he acquired the appe- 



Salvation from Artificial Appetites. 203 

Cite for morphine, and indulged it ten years. 
He breakfasted on it, dined on it, and took a 
dose the last thing at night. Hi« daily allow- 
ance for several years was fully enough to kill 
one hundred persons. In the presence of 
several physicians he swallowed enough to de- 
stroy two hundred men. He was convinced 
of his sin, and tried to break off in vain. Once 
he abstained a day and a half until the effects 
on body and mind became alarming, and five 
physicians were called who prescribed mor- 
phine to prevent delirium or death. Thus in- 
dulging a year longer, he sought his spiritual 
adviser. He was advised to give up morphine. 
He replied, ' I shall die.' ' Well, die then ; 
better so than live in sin and die unforgiven.' 
He came forward for prayers in the Church, 
and was told to trust Jesus fully to save him 
from his appetite now. He trusted, and then 
occurred a scene never to be forgotten by those 
present. The glory of the Lord shone in his 
sanctuary; power from on high came upon 
this wretched soul whom Satan had bound, 
lo ! these many years ; his very face was il- 
lumined, while he poured forth his praises, 
exulting in his instantaneous and wonderful 



204 Love Enthroned. 

deliverance. It only remains to be added that 
from that glad hour no desire for his former 
sin troubled him, no temptation to its indul- 
gence has visited him : he is greatly improved 
in physical health, and he has experienced no 
re-action or ill effects from the sudden disuse 
of the pernicious drug." 

At the South Framingham Camp-meeting 
in August, 1873, a witness, whose testimony 
was amply corroborated by others from his 
town, testified that at his conversion two years 
before, he was instantaneously emancipated 
from the appetite for rum and tobacco, to 
which he had been excessively and notoriously 
addicted. Since the minister could not pre- 
vail on this vile drunkard to attend Church, 
he appointed a meeting in the home of the 
wretched inebriate. In the sermon Christ 
was exalted as a savior from all the foul and 
enslaving appetites which degrade and destroy 
men. No impression seemed to be made 
upon the bloated, blear-eyed tenant of that 
hovel. But, awakening in the night, the 
preacher's words w r ere applied by the Spirit 
to his heart. He saw his hopeless slavery, 
and he saw his great Deliverer. He called 



Salvation from Artificial Appetites. 205 

upon him in faith, and even before he had 
arisen from his bed, he was enabled to say 
with the poet, 

" Long my imprisoned spirit lay 

Fast bound in sin and nature's night ; 
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray ; 

I woke ; my dungeon flamed with light ; 
My chains fell off, my heart was free — 
I rose, went forth, and followed thee." 

He declares that all desire for tobacco and 
alcoholic drinks was taken from him in the 
twinkling of an eye, and that it has not re- 
turned for an instant, even amid the fumes of 
these poisons. 

Verily our Jesus is " mighty to save." 
It will be seen that these deliverances were, 
in several of these cases, wrought in the mo- 
ment of the justification of the persons con- 
cerned. The explanation is that they were 
distinctly apprehending thus much of the evil 
of their nature, and were trusting Christ for 
deliverance from this galling yoke. If all their 
inherited depravity had been as clearly seen 
as were these acquired defilements, and their 
faith had laid hold of Jesus as able " to cleanse 
from all filthiness of the flesh and the spirit/' 



206 Love Enthroned. 

there is reason to believe that their complete 
sanctification would have been accomplished 
when they were justified. 

In this power of Christ to bind and cast out 
the strong man of appetite, what encourage- 
ment is afforded to the Christian world to at- 
tempt to save the countless hosts of drunkards 
and moderate drinkers of alcoholic beverages — 
the estimated ten millions of Mexicans and 
South Americans who defile and destroy them- 
selves with coca juice ; the hundred millions of 
Hindoos chewing betel; the two hundred and 
fifty millions of Asiatie hasheesh eaters ; the 
four hundred millions enslaved to opium ; and 
the eight hundred millions who bow beneath 
the galling yoke of that filthy tyrant, tobacco.* 

* Methodist Quarterly, 1859, p. igi. 



Full Assurance of Faith. 207 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE FULL ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

§ 1. Salvation from Doubt. 

** I know not what it is to doubt ; 
My heart is ever gay." — Fader. 

THE most surprising fact which came to 
the knowledge of Jesus was the weakness 
of his disciples' faith. Descended from heav- 
en, written all over with proofs of his divinity, 
and bearing the great seal of God in his right 
hand — the miracle-working power — he stood 
unrecognized in the world. A little band of a 
dozen or more attach themselves to his for- 
tunes, and avow faith in him ; but often their 
perception of the wonderful beauty of his 
character was so dim, and their glimpses of 
his divinity were so brief, that they relapsed 
into distressing doubt, and were on the point 
of abandoning him forever. We often wonder 
at their skepticism and spiritual stupor, as if 
we, standing in their place, would have had 
eyes to pierce the clouds of doubt, and to be- 



2o8 Love Enthroned. 

hold and adore the full-orbed sun in its first 
rising upon the world's darkness ; but we are 
by no means sure that if we had been the 
companions of Christ's earthly wanderings, 
listened to his words, and witnessed his works, 
we should have escaped the oft-repeated re- 
buke, " O ye of little faith ! wherefore do ye 
doubt!" Should Jesus to-day step into our 
Christian assemblies, and tell us his view of 
our spiritual condition, he would find a sen- 
tence in his gospels just adapted to the state 
of the modern Church, " O ye of little faith." 
We have somewhere met with a quaint, but 
exhaustive classification of mankind in respect 
to Christ ; namely, believers, half-believers, 
make-believers, and unbelievers. There is no 
fifth class. Nor can they be reduced to three. 
Some persons deny the existence of half-be- 
lievers. They assert that there are no degrees 
of faith ; that it is not possible that a soul 
should be in such an equivocal attitude 
toward Christian truth ; that there is either 
full belief or unbelief. But half-believers have 
existed all along the history of the Church ; 
and they throng our churches to-day, and they 
make up the majority of disciples now as they 



Full A ssurance of Faith. 209 

did in the days of the Son of man. It is in- 
teresting to trace the boundary between half- 
believers, or doubters — we use the term syn- 
onymously — and unbelievers. Unbelief has 
no positive element of faith, and hence is al- 
ways the ground of condemnation. It is al- 
ways fatal to right practice. The unbeliever 
cannot perform Christian duties with any sin- 
cerity, for there is no motive power. Unbe- 
lief is spiritual paralysis, voluntarily induced 
and retained. Its inner essence and culpabil- 
ity lie in the obstinacy of the will against the 
truth. The secret reason why the intellect 
does not assent to the truth is, because the will 
refuses to obey. Unbelief has always a moral 
and not an intellectual cause. It arises, not 
from a lack of evidence, but from an unwill- 
ingness to follow wherever the truth may lead. 
Hence, Jesus applies his antidote directly to 
the will when he would prescribe an infallible 
remedy. 

" If any man wills* to do His will, he shall 
know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or 

whether I speak of myself/' 

* See the Greek. Our version has obscured the distinct ele- 
ment of volition. 
14 



210 Love Enthroned. 

Perfect consecration is the doorway out of 
the most inveterate unbelief. This is also the 
perfect cure for doubt. There is this differ- 
ence between unbelief and doubt. In all 
doubt there is a positive element of faith 
toward which the soul moves, when it is met 
by a counter current of objections and difficul- 
ties. These two opposing forces — faith and 
doubt — distract the soul ; but if the result is 
progress toward Christ, the doubt, though it 
has weakened, has not destroyed, the Chris- 
tian. The positive element in it has triumphed. 
Jesus always upbraided doubt, but he never 
sends the doubter to hell, because it is possible 
for the will to be in an attitude of obedience 
despite the doubts. It is possible for a Chris- 
tian to live on the right side of doubt ; that 
is, to act as if he had no doubts. When Naa- 
man was told to bathe seven times in Jordan, 
his reason immediately questioned the efficacy 
of this prescription for the leprosy. At first 
he was a positive unbeliever, and turned his 
face toward Damascus ; but at the suggestion 
of his servants, and in view of the greatness of 
the benefit and the simplicity of the remedy, 
he was induced to turn the head of his caval- 



Full A ssurance of Faith, 2 1 1 

cade toward the despised Jordan. He was 
still brimful of doubt, but he had faith enough 
to move him in the right direction. He dipped 
himself once, and examining his skin, found 
no change. His doubts increased with each 
plunge ; but he still had faith sufficient to go 
on till the seventh plunge, when his flesh be- 
came like a little child's. This is living on 
the right side of doubt. He went to the Jor- 
dan a doubter, and was healed, instead of go- 
ing to Damascus an unbeliever, to linger out 
his days in abhorred loathsomeness. 

In Bunyan's immortal allegory there is a 
scene which strikingly portrays unbelief, doubt, 
and faith. Christian and Pliable tumble to- 
gether into the Slough of Despond. Pliable 
wallows till he gets out " on that side of the 
slough which is next to his own house ; so 
away he went, and Christian saw him no 
more." This is living on the wrong side of 
doubt, and going into the darkness of con- 
firmed unbelief. Christian " struggled to that 
side of the slough which was farthest from 
his own house, and next to the wicket gate." 
He lived on the right side of doubt, and 
reached the Celestial City, while Pliable per- 



212 Love Enthroned. 

ished in the City of Destruction. Christian did 
nobly, but he might have done much better. 
There was another pilgrim, named Faithful, 
who, on coming to the same slough, looked 
carefully, and found " substantial steps placed, 
even through the very midst of this slough,' 1 
and walked in safety upon them. These steps 
are the Divine promises, and this character, 
Faithful, represents all perfect believers in 
Christ Jesus, lifted by faith above the quag- 
mire while planting their feet upon the immu- 
table granite of God's word. 

Such a life is possible. It begins with the 
moment when the half-believer "knows the 
exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward 
who believe " fully in " the working of his 
mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, 
when he raised him from the dead." This is 
salvation from doubt. There are witnesses on 
earth to-day who testify to this salvation as 
the blessed experience of years, yea, scores of 
years. Harassed and weakened by doubts, 
they opened the Bible and found it a vast 
magazine of promises. Among these, one 
promise rose like Mont Blanc, and fixed their 
gaze : it was " the Promise of the Father." 



Full Assurance of Faith. 213 

the Comforter, who should glorify Christ by a 
revelation of his power to save. They appro- 
priated this great promise of the greatest gift 
that men can wish, or heaven can send, and 
suddenly their feet were lifted from the plane 
of their past experience, and planted on that 
serene and cloudless summit, where each might 
sing : — 

44 Rejoicing now in earnest hope 
I stand, and from the mountain top 

See all the land below ; 
Rivers of milk and honey rise, 
And all the fruits of Paradise 
In endless plenty grow." 

It is not surprising that many, believing the 
testimony of their brethren and sisters, are 
earnestly crying, 

" O, that / might at once go up ; 
No more on this side Jordan stop, 

But now the land possess ; 
This moment end my legal years, 
Sorrows, and sins, and doubts, and fears, — 
A howling wilderness." 

But many are kept back from seeking salva- 
tion from doubt by the suggestion that this 
whole question of assurance is determined by 
our mental and physical constitutions. They 
say that this salvation is for the sanguine, the 



214 Love Enthroned, 

ardent style of minds, with whom faith is 
easy. But bilious and phlegmatic temper- 
aments, when they fully trust in Jesus, the 
complete Saviour, are just as easily lifted 
to the sunlit summits of assurance, and they 
become far more stable in their experience. 
Read the Acts of the Apostles, and you will 
find that after the pentecostal outpouring of 
the Spirit, there was great joy, betokening 
that the shadows of the night of doubt were 
dispelled by the rising of the day-star within 
their hearts. New Testament Christians are 
abounding in joy as soon as they receive the 
Holy Ghost in full measure. Temperament 
makes no difference. 

§ 2. The Psychology of Christian Assurance* 

Man's cognitive or knowing powers are few 
in number. Through his senses or percep- 
tions he knows the qualities of matter. By 

* If the reader abhors metaphysics, he would do well to 
skip this and the following section. Yet we have tried to 
practice the advice of our college preceptor, Dr. Olin : " Stu- 
dents, if you put metaphysics into your sermons, be sure that 
you make them luminous." We trust that much skepticism 
will be dispelled by showing that a degree of certitude in spir- 
itual knowledge, higher than even that of material things, is 
attainable by every believer in Jesus Christ 



Full A ssurance of Faith. 215 

his internal perception he knows also the 
inner world. By his faculty of relations, dis- 
cursive or elaborative power, he infers the 
unknown from the known. But lying back 
of these faculties, and existing before them all 
in the order of nature, but not in the order 
of development, is the power of original sug- 
gestion, the faculty of intuition. This term, 
from the Latin intueor, " look directly at," is 
used to designate the ability of the mind 
under certain conditions to gaze immediately 
upon certain truths independent of the per- 
ceptive or the elaborative faculties. These 
truths have various designations, as first, self- 
evident, or intuitive truths, first principles, 
native notions, etc.* 

The notions grasped by this faculty are 
space, time, cause, substance, right and wrong, 
personal existence, personal identity, the ax- 
ioms of mathematics, etc. When the mind is 
brought into activity by the presentation of 
the external world to the senses, or by sensa- 
tion and perception, these notions start into 
being as if from the very groundwork of the 
mind. They may be known by the following 

* Sir William Hamilton's " Metaphysics," p. 514* 



216 Love Enthroned. 

criteria: i. Incomprehensibility- -"W r e do not com- 
prehend how or why the thing is. 2. Simplic- 
ity — It cannot be resolved into several other 
notions or cognitions. 3. Necessity •, and con- 
sequent universality — The non-existence of a 
first cause cannot be conceived ; hence it is 
said to be necessary, and, of course, universal. 
4. Comparative evidence and certainty — This 
strictly pertains to the thinking subject rather 
than to the primary truth. The mind has the 
highest degree of certitude in contemplating 
these truths. 

The interesting question now arises, whether 
the notion of a personal God is given by intu- 
ition. The intuitional Deists of India, consti- 
tuting the Brahmo Somaj, teach that the idea 
of God, and all other religious truths, are given 
by the faculty of original suggestion, intuition, 
or pure reason. Hence a revelation is a super- 
fluity. The American transcendentalists agree 
with these Asiatic philosophers in ascribing to 
man, as innate in his soul, all truth necessary 
to his proper religious development. But 
neither Scripture, experience, nor observation 
justifies this system. The notion of cause is 
given by this faculty, and, by implication, 3 



Full A ssurance of Faith. 2 1 7 

first cause. But this is not a personal God. 
It is disputed that the notion of right and 
wrong given by the ethical sense, added to 
that of first cause, develops the notion of a 
personal God. If it could, the notion would 
violate the second criterion, and, consequent- 
ly, would not be a primary truth. And yet if 
God is ever known, it must be through intui- 
tion that this knowledge is reached. The 
analysis of the human soul discloses the anom- 
alous fact that it has a faculty for a class of 
ideas of which it is destitute. The only ex- 
planation of this anomaly must be found in the 
absence of the proper conditions under which 
this kind of truths is developed. The abstract 
notion of space can never arise in one born 
blind till he gazes upon objects in space. 

We believe that the distinction between right 
and wrong arises only after intercourse with 
human beings in whom rights inhere. Hence 
the wolf-reared men found at different times 
in India evinced no moral sense. Now the 
lacking requisite for spiritual perception is the 
presence and illumination of the Holy Ghost 
in the soul. This was the natural and normal 
state of the unfallen man in Eden. God was 



218 Love Enthroned. 

immediately apprehended as a personality 
through a sense of his love flowing like a river 
through Adam's consciousness. There was an 
interior light, the Holy Spirit, within the hu- 
man spirit. Sin extinguished that light, and 
the religious intuitions ceased, leaving a yearn- 
ing — a painful yet ill-defined — sense of want, 
unrest, and forebodings of ill, sufficient to pro- 
duce a blind activity of the religious nature. 
St. Paul has truthfully portrayed this condi- 
tion : " But the natural man receiveth not the 
things of the Spirit, for they are foolishness 
unto him ; neither can he know them, for they 
are spiritually discerned. " 

In marked contrast is the clear vision of the 
believer. " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 
neither have entered into the heart of man, the 
things which God hath prepared for them that 
love him. But God hath revealed them unto 
us by his Spirit. Which things also we speak, 
not in the words which man's wisdom teach- 
eth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, com- 
paring spiritual things with spiritual, " or, more 
properly, " explaining spiritual things to spir- 
itual minds." The soul, when thus filled with 
the light of the Spirit, immediately appre- 



Full A ssurance of Faith. 219 

hends the existence of God in Christ, and his 
great love to me, individualizing me in his re- 
gards, and also it has an intuitive conviction 
of immortal life. " For we know that if the 
earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved, 
we have a house not made with hands, eternal 
in the heavens." That the person thus com- 
ing into communication with the believer in 
this exalted state of spiritual illumination is 
Jesus Christ, apprehended as the Supreme 
Deity, is evident from the testimony of all ad- 
vanced believers. Christ stands forth before 
them, the chief among ten thousand, and the 
one altogether lovely. They speak of an in- 
effable joy and assurance arising from an in- 
expressible love to him. Their language is, 

" On Christ, the solid rock, I stand ; 
All other ground is sinking sand." 

He is, as never before, the sovereign of their 
hearts. His divinity impresses itself upon the 
soul, which, despite all former doubts, now 
cries out, " My Lord and my God." How ex- 
actly does this experience harmonize with the 
Scripture, " No man can say" (truly from the 
heart, not dogmatically from the head) "that 
Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost/* 



220 Love Enthroned. 

Not only does experience assert that Jesus is 
Lord, but the Son of God expressly assured 
his disciples that the Paraclete should glorify 
him, " for he shall receive of mine, and shall 
show it unto you." 

Thus the humblest, most illiterate mind, by 
the exercise of perfect faith in Jesus, grasps 
the only key to the fortress of unbelief, the 
citadel of anti-Christ — modern Rationalism, 
the sum of whose faith, or rather unfaith, is, the 
only God is the Father; Jesus Christ is dead 
and gone in the same sense that Julius Cesar 
is in his grave, and influences this world only 
through history. That key is the immediate, 
intuitive knowledge of Jesus as a living and 
almighty Saviour, reigning within the soul 
without a rival. The question has been asked, 
whether this knowledge of Christ is independ- 
ent of the testimony of the evangelists, and 
of the women who saw Jesus alive after his 
death ? We reply, that their testimony is the 
appointed means used by the modern believer 
to the attainment of the end, an inward mani- 
festation of Christ. He who climbs up the 
stairs leading to the dome of St. Peter's, uses 
every stair to increase his elevation. But he 



Full Assurance of Faith. 221 

is not using every stair when he stands upon 
the summit of the dome, and the magnificent 
landscape of the Eternal City, the Campagna, 
the Apennines, the Albanian hills, and the 
Mediterranean, lie in entrancing beauty before 
his eyes. So faith in the statements respect- 
ing the historic Christ, constitutes the staircase 
up which we mount to reach the summit of 
Hermon, where that historic Christ is glorious- 
ly transfigured before our spiritual vision. In 
an important sense, the testimony of the be- 
liever of to-day is independent of the record 
of the evangelists, and is a new confirmation 
of its truth. The fact of the resurrection rests 
upon historic proofs. The fact that Jesus lives 
a king, and reigns over the believer, rests on 
intuitive evidence. 

The contents of that assurance afforded by 
the spiritual perceptions are, CHRIST JESUS 
OUR LORD. Dogmatic truths are not discov- 
ered in their abstract form. They are con- 
crete in Him, the Alpha and Omega — pardon, 
purity, life eternal. He is made unto us wis- 
dom, sanctification, and redemption. 

It remains to prove that this apprehension 
of Christ sustains all the tests which are the 



222 Love Enthroned. 

peculiar criteria of intuitive knowledge. It is 
incomprehensible. We can give no account of 
the rationale. It lies beyond the range of our 
powers. The Scriptures assert that the mani- 
festation of Christ is by the medium of the 
Holy Ghost. But he himself is not appre- 
hended. The eye does not apprehend the 
light, but the object manifested by the light as 
a medium. We do apprehend the personality 
of Jesus, but not that of the Divine torch- 
bearer who pours illumination upon the spirit- 
ual eye. The trinal distinctions of the Divine 
Persons is not manifested, nor their separate 
offices in the salvation of the soul.* Christ 

* We do not deny that some souls have been brought into 
communion so intimate as to distinguish the persons of the 
Trinity. There is indisputable testimony on this point. The 
Marquis De Renty, the most spiritual mind which France has 
produced, professed " to carry about with him an experimental 
verity of the Holy Trinity." Rev. Thomas Collins, an emi- 
nently successful Wesleyan preacher, who dwelt ever on the 
serene summits of perfect love, whose words were thunderbolts 
to the hearts of sinners and worldly professors, had a similar 
power of discriminating between the persons of the Trinity 
Hester Ann Rogers, Lady Maxwell, William B ram well, John 
Smith, and Charles Perronet, intimate that they have com- 
munion with each Divine Person distinctly. We are of the 
opinion that these are exceptional and abnormal experiences, 
notwithstanding that Dr. Owen, in his quarto on Communion 



Full Assurance of Faith, 223 

fills the vision. The source of the light in 
which he stands radiant is not cognized. By 
faith in the words of Jesus we know it is the 
Holy Spirit. 

The knowledge has the second characteris- 
tic, simplicity. It cannot be resolved into 
constituent elements. Though concrete, it is 
not complex. The fullness of blessing in 
Christ is the fullness of an indivisible person, 
not of a thing separable into its elements. 

The third criterion is necessity, and hence, 
universality. The testimony of advanced be- 
lievers under the illumination of the abiding 
Comforter is full on this point. The non-ex- 
istence of Christ's love to them is something 
as unthinkable as the annihilation of space, 

teaches that the earliest and purest Christian ages held that 
this experience is attainable by all advanced believers. The 
Scriptures which come the nearest to a promise of such an ex- 
perience are John xiv, 17, 23. It is a fair interpretation of the 
first that under the illumination of the Comforter, revealing 
and glorifying Christ in the believer's consciousness, his su- 
preme Deity shall be demonstrated : " Then shall ye know 
that I am in my Father." The second text assures the believer 
that the Father and the Son shall come and abide with him. 
But to only a few is the telescopic power given to resolve this 
double star into two distinct orbs. To every other retina 
turned toward it the two appear as one. 



224 Love Enthroned. 

He is to them all and in all. They find him 
the center of their thoughts, around which 
they revolve by the constraining power of his 
love. He fills all things, all their thoughts. 
Praise and prayer to him are involuntary, 
and unconsciously offered, even while the in- 
intellect and the hands are busy with the 
cares of life, so perfectly has Christ's personal- 
ity pervaded theirs. " I will make my abode 
in you/' The criterion of universality accom- 
panies, of course, necessity. If a notion is nec- 
essary it must be universal. The only excep- 
tion is, where the conditions of any intuitive 
notion do not exist. The abstract idea of 
space does not exist in a person who has never 
had eyesight. 

To the trained mathematician there are intu- 
itive truths relating to numbers and quantities 
which do not exist in the savage. Dr. M'Cosh 
teaches, that the intuitional faculty is capable 
of cultivation. Hence the universality exists 
wherever the proper conditions are found. It 
is just so with the knowledge of Christ in high 
Christian experience. It is universal with those 
who have perfect faith in Jesus. That a major- 
ity of the inhabitants of the world, including 



Full A ssurance of Faith. 225 

some great writers on mental philosophy, are 
destitute of this intuitive apprehension of 
Christ and the joyful assurance of his love, 
does not disprove this criterion, for the major- 
ity do not perform the conditions, they do not 
fully trust Christ. It gives great pleasure to 
state that the experience of perfect love sus- 
tains the fourth test of primary truth — cer- 
tainty. Of nothing is the mature believer under 
the holy unction more certain, than he is that 
his Redeemer lives. Doubt, which haunted 
the beginning of his Christian life, has been 
dispelled by the rising of the Sun of Right- 
eousness. The darkness is past, the true light 
now shines. He can sooner doubt the solid 
earth or the shining sun than his sonship to 
God, and joint heirship with Christ. 

" O love, thou bottomless abyss ! 

My sins are swallowed up in thee ; 
Cover'd is my unrighteousness, 

Nor spot of guilt remains on me : 
While Jesus' blood, through earth and skies, 
Mercy, free, boundless mercy, cries." 

The conclusion to which we have arrived is, 

that in his unfallen state, man had and fully 

exercised the power of intuition Godward, and 
35 



226 Love Enthroned. 

spiritual truth flooded his soul as the sun- 
beams fill the rain-drop. Sin shrouded the 
soul with a pall of blackness, excluding the 
glorious sunlight ; but perfect faith in Jesus 
Christ removes the pall, and the long-lost light 
again fills all that spirit. The soul, amid the 
intensity of this spiritual illumination, enjoys 
an assurance of salvation which could not be 
increased were that fact written by Gabriel in 
letters of fire across the arches of the sky. No 
amount of testimony, human or angelic, can 
increase the certitude of the soul lit up by the 
presence of the Comforter. We do not need 
lanterns to see the sun rise. He brings his 
own self-revealing light. 

§ 3. The Spiritual Manifestation of Christ not Illusory 

but Real. 

I speak wisdom (philosophy) among them that are perfect. 

—St. Paul. 

There is in many minds, even among be- 
lievers, a grave misapprehension of the grounds 
of certainty with respect to spiritual things. 
It is tacitly conceded that there is more room 
for doubt with respect to Christian experience 
than there is in the affairs of this life. It is 



Full A ssurance of Faith. 22 7 

the purpose of this chapter to demonstrate 
that this concession is unnecessary, and to 
show that we may, under the full illumination 
of the Holy Spirit, as certainly know God in 
Jesus Christ as we know any facts in this 
world. Let us take the fact of the existence 
of an external world. Ordinary minds regard 
an outer world as a certainty the highest pos- 
sible for the mind to entertain. But when we 
begin to look for the ground of this certainty 
we find ourselves afloat on a broad sea of con- 
flicting opinions on which we are so tossed 
that our indisputable certainty becomes very 
uncertain, and in some minds vanishes alto- 
gether. 

The two grand divisions of opinion are, 
1) that our consciousness of external ob- 
jects is mediate, and, 2) that it is immediate. 
Philosophers adhering to the first view reason 
thus: The mind, imprisoned in the body, 
cannot travel out of it and grasp external ob- 
jects. It must always remain in its appropri- 
ate sphere. It is conscious only of what is 
taking place within itself. It is unextended, 
and cannot grasp matter which has extension. 
It is immaterial, and cannot lay hold of the 



228 Love Enthroned. 

qualities of the material world. Yet in some 
way we are quite sure of an external world. 
But how ? Here we find philosophers divid- 
ing again into two classes: I. That there is a 
third thing between the material object and 
the immaterial mind, which constitutes the 
medium of perception. What this third some- 
thing is, it puzzles the philosophers to tell. 
If it is material, it is in need of a medium it- 
self in order to come into contact with the 
mind. But if it is purely immaterial, the 
mind in cognizing it is gaining no knowledge 
of matter, and hence no certainty. 

2. The other way of explaining this difficulty 
is to assert that in perception we perceive nei- 
ther the material objects nor their images, called 
by the ancients, " skins of things," the media 
above described, but we perceive only certain 
modifications of our own minds which we are 
perpetually mistaking for external objects. 
Both classes of these philosophers are Ideal- 
ists. Their fundamental assumption is, that 
only the mind itself can be immediately known 
as an ultimate fact in consciousness. The log- 
ical sequence is, that the external world is a 
groundless and unnecessary assumption. This 



Full Assurance of Faith. 229 

is pure idealism. But some, the hypothetical 
Realists, who start with the same assumption, 
try hard to save the external world from van- 
ishing into cloud-land by making it an infer- 
ence from the third thing spoken of, or from 
the modification of itself. But an inference is 
not worth any thing unless certain proved 
premises lie back of it. In this case the log- 
ical premises are lacking, and we have no cer- 
tainty of the existence of any thing external 
to mind. The material world is logically an- 
nihilated by the philosophy which assumes that 
in consciousness the ego, or self, is all that is 
immediately known. Yet this is the philos- 
ophy which is dominant in Germany to-day, 
and is widely prevalent throughout civilization 
wherever the modern school of the natural 
Realists or natural Dualists does not prevail. 

This school, of which Sir William Hamilton is 
the chief, assumes that both the self, or ego f and 
the not-self, or non-ego, are immediately known 
in consciousness. This is the second grand 
division of philosophers. They are called Real- 
ists. Sir William Hamilton boldly enlarged 
the sphere of consciousness to include not 
only the modifications of mind, but the out- 



230 Love Enthroned. 

ward object which produces the inward change. 
According to him, I am not conscious of the 
idea of this writing desk as a third thing be- 
tween the material desk and the purely spir- 
itual mind, but I am conscious of the desk it- 
self. Hence the Hamiltonians — a minority of 
these philosophers — are certain of an external 
world ; the rest of them are either in great per- 
plexity on this subject, or they have settled 
down upon the airy foundation of pure Idealism, 
and are content with the belief that matter 
is a stupendous illusion. I do not say that a 
majority of mankind are in this predicament, 
for happily the mass of the human family are 
not metaphysicians, they have not ventured to 
turn over the corner-stone of their knowledge 
to see what it rests upon : they have the good 
sense to act upon their experience of realities 
as natural realists, and have no difficulties with 
the grounds of their knowledge. We shall 
proceed to show that Christians act in the 
same way with their knowledge of spiritual 
realities. They are spiritual realists, those of 
them who have become acquainted with the 
Spirit of truth, or the Spirit of reality, as it 
might be correctly translated. We will now 



Full Assurance of Faith. 231 

endeavor to show the philosophic grounds 
of certainty in regard to the spiritual mani- 
festation of the Son of God to the perfect 
believer. 

The subtle suggestion is sometimes pre- 
sented that this whole matter of Christian ex- 
perience is all illusory — a phenomenon of our 
own minds under the influence of causes wholly 
within itself. The thoughtful believer is some- 
times annoyed by the thought that God has 
nothing to do with inward religious emotions — 
that what seems to come from without, and to 
move so marvelously within the soul, assuring 
of pardon and cleansing from sin, really arises 
from the hidden depths of our own mysterious 
nature while intently contemplating religious 
ideas, and that there is no manifestation of 
God at all as an objective existence. 

To this we have two answers. In the first 
place, if this illusion leaves permanent benefi- 
cial effects upon the character, gives victory 
over sin, fills the soul with love toward God 
and the purest philanthropy, destroys the fear 
of death, and adorns and beautifies the spirit 
with all excellences, it is infinitely better than 
any reality to be found on earth, and it should 



232 Love Enthroned. 

be earnestly coveted and diligently sought by 
every person. 

2. But we may know that God manifests him- 
self in Christian experience by the testimony of 
consciousness — the same testimony that assures 
us of the existence of the external world. To 
demonstrate the existence of the material world, 
as we have shown, has been for ages " the puz- 
zle of philosophers," as Tyndall styles it, many 
contending that the sphere of consciousness is 
limited to the operations of mind itself, and 
that it cannot directly cognize any thing ex- 
ternal. The most that it can do is to infer 
that its sensations have an external, unknown, 
and forever unknowable cause. Those who 
deny the correctness of this inference deny 
the existence of matter, and resolve it into 
ideas. With idealists, the ego only exists ; the 
mountain, river, and plain are only so many dif- 
ferent modifications of the ego, or self. At length 
Sir William Hamilton arose, and cut this meta- 
physical knot by boldly enlarging the sphere 
of consciousness to include the outer world. 
So we reply that the soul illumined by the 
Holy Spirit is conscious, not only of its own 
subjective religious exercises, but of God, their 



Full A ssurance of Faith. 233 

external cause, impressing himself mysterious- 
ly upon the Spirit. In other words, we may 
have, when our perceptions are quickened by 
the Holy Spirit, the same knowledge of God 
as we have of the external world. Christians 
in advanced experience universally testify that 
they know God. 

It is fundamental in philosophy that con- 
sciousness cannot lie. To deny this would be 
to nullify mental science by throwing discredit 
upon the source of it facts. For it is a law of 
evidence that one proved falsehood destroys 
the credibility of a witness. " Falsus in uno,fal- 
sus in omnibus " — false in one instance, false in 
all. Consciousness testifies in Christian expe- 
rience that a power from without the soul enters 
in and subdues all things to itself, and that this 
power is a person, since it does the work of a 
person, certifies to the penitent believer his 
pardon, and awakens an intense love toward 
the worker — an affection directed toward per- 
sons only. That this person is Christ, or rath- 
er, the Holy Spirit revealing him, is also direct- 
ly apprehended by our spiritual perceptions in 
a manner wholly inexplicable to reason. But 
it ought not to be strange that He who created 



234 Love Enthroned. 

the infant with power to interpret its moth- 
er's smile should endow the human spirit with 
power to recognize its Creator's presence. 
But there are persons who cannot accept Sir 
William Hamilton's widening of the sphere of 
consciousness to include the external world. 
It is not our purpose to defend any system of 
philosophy. If you admit the certainty of an 
external world as attainable by the mind with- 
out its direct cognition by consciousness, you 
must assume that it is an irresistible inference 
from modifications of mind through sensation 
and external perception. In other words, the 
sudden pain which shoots through the nerves 
to the sensorium carries with it the feeling of 
certainty that some cause outside of the mind, 
some thorn or needle, is the cause of this sen- 
sation. In like manner, we argue that certain- 
ty which the Christian feels, that the changes 
occurring in his experience are not from some 
cause from within, but from without, and that 
this cause is not material but spiritual in its 
nature. We are endowed with the ability to 
discriminate between the objective and the 
subjective. If it were not so we could not dis- 
tinguish our perceptions from the images of 



Full Assurance of Faith. 235 

our fancy. In like manner we are enabled to 
discriminate between religious emotions hav- 
ing an objective cause, and mere subjective 
phantasies. Hence, advanced Christians, es- 
pecially, speak with the utmost assurance of 
their communion with God, and of the joy of 
the Holy Ghost. The Christian under the 
full illumination of the Spirit, as certainly 
knows God as either the Hamiltonian or the 
non-Hamiltonian may know matter. Con- 
sciousness testifies to no greater certainty in 
the apprehension of the external world than 
she does in the knowledge of Christ. The 
direct intuition, or the inference, if it be an 
inference, amounts to an absolute certainty in 
both cases. 

But we utterly despair of convincing the 
Idealist of the agency of God in Christian ex- 
perience, since he invalidates the testimony 
of consciousness to the existence of any thing 
except the operations of his own mind. He 
resolves into the omnivorous ego the earth 
and sky, and the God who fills them. To 
attempt to prove to the Idealist the agency 
of God in regeneration and sanctification by 
assuming that he is immanent in the human 



236 Love Enthroned. 

soul would be only confounding the subject 
with the object, and affording the premises 
from which Pantheism, with all its disastrous 
moral sequences, is the logical inference. This 
book is written for people of common sense, 
who believe that consciousness attests that we 
live in a world of realities, and not of illusions. 
To such persons we would say that the field of 
internal Christian experience affords the ground- 
work for a philosophy as positive as any based 
upon the facts of physics or civil history. The 
moral and religious intuitions furnish us with 
utterances as authoritative as those which arise 
in the field of pure intellect. Of course the 
advocates of Positivism, and the other various 
forms of Materialism, will not expect the Chris- 
tian to demonstrate the reality of the work of 
the Divine Spirit from a stand-point so low as 
the denial of the separate existence of the hu- 
man soul, and the rejection of the Divine per- 
sonality. For if the universal testimony that 
the ego y the thinking subject, is not the body, 
but a distinct substance, be discarded, it is 
scarcely reasonable to suppose that the attesta- 
tions of millions of Christians to a supernatural 
change wrought in their consciousness, and 



Full A ssurance of Faith . 237 

transforming their characters, will be received 
by these miscalled philosophers. For that 
only is a genuine philosophy which recognizes 
all the facts in the world of mind, and con- 
structs some rational hypothesis for their ex- 
planation. The facts for the truth of which 
Christian believers vouch are as stubborn as 
any in the domain of science. It is certainly 
very unscientific to refuse to put them to the test 
of experiment, and to discredit the testimony 
of the vast body of competent witnesses who 
had done so, with the assertion that they are 
deceived or deceiving. 

In our reference to these systems of philos- 
ophy it is not our purpose to prove one or dis- 
prove others, but simply to show that if any of 
them admit a certainty of any one fact in the 
outer or the inner world, the facts of Christian 
experience are just as certainly known, resting 
on the same basis — the testimony of conscious- 
ness. The Christian can give just as good an 
account of his experimental knowledge of Je- 
sus Christ, as the philosopher can give of his 
knowledge of the external world. 

It is to be regretted that the writers on men- 
tal philosophy have with so great unanimity 



238 Love Enthroned. 

deemed the psychology of Christian experience 
unworthy their notice.* We know of no better 
explanation of this fact than the absence of a 
marked spiritual experience of conscious salva- 
tion in the hearts of these writers. If they had 
been made conscious " partakers of the Holy 
Ghost, and had tasted the powers of the world 
to come/' they would not have failed to de- 
scribe the marvelous phenomena attendant upon 
that transformation of the entire man which is 
called a " translation from darkness to light, a 
new creation, a resurrection from the dead/' 
No modification of mind is more sharply de- 
fined in the consciousness, and more tenacious- 
ly grasped by the memory. Hence these re- 
ligious transitions and uplifts of the soul pre- 
sent an attractive field for the lover of intel- 
lectual science. 

Rauch, in his Psychology, has devoted a 
chapter to religion, styling it " a peculiar ac- 
tivity of God in the human soul, differing 
from all his other operations, by which it is 
converted, renewed, and purified, by a power 
which manifests itself to the consciousness, 

* President Finney and Professors Upham and Mahan are 
conspicuous exceptions. 



Full A ssurance of Faith. 2 39 

needing no other light." He writes like a man 
of Christian experience, or like a candid philos- 
opher who attaches importance to the testimony 
of multitudes who have had such an experience. 
But Cousin has touched upon this subject, in 
one of his lectures, in a far different spirit from 
Rauch, indicating his utter ignorance of the 
spiritual power of the Gospel in affecting trans- 
formations of the character. With him Chris- 
tianity is not a glorious life within the soul, but 
a set of facts and a list of dogmas apprehended 
by the intellect. Cousin's fundamental error 
his np&rov ipevdog, lies in this proposition : " The 
only faculty of knowledge is reason." All the 
negations of Rationalism lie folded in this acorn. 
The Infinite Being can never be " the direct ob- 
ject of love." " Such a love cannot sustain it- 
self save by superhuman efforts, which terminate 
in folly." All this would be true were there no 
supernatural Agent to " shed abroad the love 
of God " in the believer's heart, and to attest 
directly to my soul that he loves me, even me. 
With an utter destitution of the spirit of true 
philosophy, this celebrated psychologist slurs 
over all Christian experience within, as the 
dreamy vagaries of mysticism, " chimerical and 



240 Love Enthroned. 

mischievous," overlooking entirely the amazing 
activities and heroic labors and sacrifices which 
have made all the Christian centuries illustrious, 
and none more brilliant than the missionary 
century in which he lived. To refute the dec- 
laration that " reason is the only faculty of 
knowledge/' we quote the utterance of another 
French philosopher, whose fame will outlive 
that of Cousin. Pascal says, " The things of 
this world must be known in order to be loved, 
but Jesus Christ must be loved in order to be 
known." This is only another form of the in- 
spired utterance of St. John, teaching that the 
heart is a faculty of knowledge : " Whosoever 
loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." 
As a painting is known only through the eye, a 
symphony through the ear, and an odor through 
the smell, so God is known only through the 
heart in holy love. We may hear words about 
a painting, we may read the notes of the music, 
we may discourse about an odor, and we may 
reason about God, but we can have a knowl- 
edge of none of them except through the ap- 
propriate faculty. 

A description of Niagara awakens no emo- 
tion, but a view from beneath Table Rock 



Full Assurance of Faith. 241 

overwhelms the soul with emotions of sub- 
limity. The cataract is now for the first time 
known, because the right perceptive faculty is 
applied. We do not know God when reason 
apprehends a first cause, and conscience de- 
mands an executive of the moral law. He 
may still be a nondescript impersonality. The 
wrong faculties are in exercise. To know him 
as a person we must know him through that 
department of our nature which always has a 
person for the object of its activity. Our 
affections go out only toward persons. When 
the heart voluntarily moves toward God in 
perfect love, the soul is deluged with that 
flood of joyful emotions which announce the 
advent of the personal God in the conscious- 
ness. This is the only " God-consciousness " 
of which we are capable. It is one thing to 
have notions about God, and it is quite a dif- 
fent thing to know him. 

John Stuart Mill, the great logician and 
oracle of Materialism, has most signally failed 
in his attempt, not to invalidate the testimony 
of Christians, but to explain their unanimous 
assertion that the Holy Spirit abides within 

them, "to witness God's eternal love." His 
16 



242 Love Enthroned. 

interpretation of the experience of believers in 
Christ is, " that it is neither more nor less than 
ascribing outward existence to the inward crea- 
tions of our own faculties — to ideas or feelings 
of the mind — and believing that, by watching 
and contemplating these ideas of its own mak- 
ing, it can read in them what takes place in 
the world without. " Hence the witness of the 
Spirit is, to him, an illusion, and communion 
with God is a pleasing hallucination, and victory 
over death through faith in Jesus is the happy 
delusion of the sailor dreaming of safety while 
approaching the rocks, lured by a false light. 
But is Mr. Mill competent to philosophize on 
this subject? Have his spiritual intuitions 
been called into activity by the quickening 
Spirit ? If not, then he is reasoning as wisely 
as one born blind who asserts that colors are 
purely subjective, " the inward creations of our 
own faculties/' So long as consciousness is 
the source of all the facts of psychology, and 
the basis of all correct conclusions, just so long 
will one spiritually blind be incompetent either 
to testify or to theorize truthfully respecting 
spiritual experience ! 

In 1866 an operator at Valencia sat at the 



Full Assurance of Faith. 243 

end of the broken cable while search was made 
for the other end in the depths of the Atlantic. 
While he was, at midnight, intently watching 
the delicate magnet disturbed by the influ- 
ences of the sea, suddenly the tiny spot of 
light flashed out the words, " God save the 
Queen." How many metaphysicians as great 
as Stuart Mill would it take to prove to that 
operator that this message was not from the 
other world, mind answering to mind in clear, 
majestic thought, but that it was a lucky com- 
bination of the incoherent pulsations of the 
sea? Just as many such philosophers will it 
require to prove to the new-born soul that the 
"Abba, Father/' suddenly resounding in his 
soul, originates in the depths of his own nature, 
and that it is not the voice of Him who sitteth 
on the throne above and sends down assurances 
of pardon and adoption to penitent believers 
below. Mr. Mill's groundless assertion will 
become an argument worthy of consideration 
when he has demonstrated — 

1. That he has had a similar Christian ex- 
perience, and that it bore the marks of an 
origin purely subjective and internal. 

2. That just such experiences arise in the 



244 Love Enthroned. 

devotees of false religions when intently con- 
templating Buddha, Brahma, Jupiter, Woden, 
Thor, or any African fetich, as are attested by 
believers in Jesus Christ. 

3. That these experiences are attended by 
a moral transformation, a victory over sin, an 
assurance of the Divine favor, and an adorn- 
ment of the character with the whole constel- 
lation of Christian virtues, love, joy, peace, 
long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, fidelity, 
meekness, and temperance. 

Until these propositions are proved, Chris- 
tians are not to be charged with folly for 
persisting in a faith which works by love, puri- 
fies the heart, overcomes the world, brings life 
and immortality to light, and enables the be- 
liever to cry, " O death, where is thy sting? O 
grave, where is thy victory ?" 

We have made the statement that the Holy 
Ghost communicates no theological truth. He 
adds no article to the Apostles' Creed, but he 
gives reality to the truths lying cold and inop- 
erative in the intellect. The vague becomes 
definite, the obscure becomes clear, the distant 
is brought nigh. Especially is Jesus Christ pre- 
sented as a real, living, and DIVINE PERSON. 



Full Assurance of Faith. 245 

It is the great mission of the Comforter to dis- 
close the Deity of Christ. " He shall take of 
mine and show unto you." If the Son of God 
were a creature, the Spirit of truth would reveal 
him as a creature. What is the universally at- 
tested fact in that high Christian experience, the 
conscious abiding of the Comforter? It is the 
manifestation of Christ as a living, loving, and 
almighty Saviour, able to save to the uttermost. 
Henceforth all speculative difficulties subside. 
As spiders' webs are swept away by the mighty 
rushing wind, intellectual objections to the Deity 
of Christ are wiped out by the pentecostal breath 
of God, the ever-blessed Spirit. This result of 
the coming of the Comforter to the disciples 
was distinctly foretold by Jesus. "At that 
day ye shall know that I am in my Father" 
This immediately became the subject-matter of 
the Apostles' preaching. " And he hath given 
to us the ministry of reconciliation ; to wit, that 
God was (is) in Christ reconciling the world 
unto himself." 

It is the coming of the Comforter which is the 
only power that can lift the yoke of Rationalism 
from the skeptic's soul. Logic fails. There 
are in the human mind naturally strong procliv- 



246 Love Enthroned. 

ities toward Unitarianism, We long to carry 
our knowledge up to unity. We delight to dis- 
cover to ev in rd nolXa, the one in the many — 
one principle binding up into unity many phe- 
nomena. This tendency of our minds lies at 
the basis of classification and induction. If al- 
lowed its full scope in theological speculations 
it ends in Deism — in plucking the crown of 
Divinity from the head of Christ. Hence our 
love of unity is a prolific source of error. Says 
Sir William Hamilton, " To this love of unity 
— to this desire of reducing the objects of our 
knowledge to harmony and system — a source 
of truth and discovery if subservient to obser- 
vation, but of error and delusion if allowed to 
dictate to observation what phenomena are to 
be perceived — we may refer the influence which 
preconceived opinions exercise upon our per- 
ceptions and judgments, by inducing us to see 
and require only what is in unison with them. 
'What we wish/ says Demosthenes, ' that we be- 
lieve.' 'What we expect/ says Aristotle, 'that 
we find : ' truths which have been re-echoed by a 
thousand confessors and confirmed by ten thou- 
sand examples. ,, Not only does the natural man, 
devoid of spiritual illumination, strongly drift 



Full Assurance of Faith 247 

toward Unitarian views of Christ ; but the Chris- 
tian Church, under high intellectual culture and 
low spirituality, tends in the same direction. 
Hence the only salvation of orthodoxy is in 
the baptism of the Holy Spirit — the anointing 
that abideth and teacheth — poured by the Di- 
vine hand upon the mass of believers. " What 
the world needs is not a mere teacher to com- 
municate something about God, but to know 
God himself by his own personal manifestation 
to each heart." 

This personal and loving manifestation of 
God to the soul required two steps: First, 
the incarnation, to bring God into the sphere 
of our sympathies in that most affecting way 
in which he is presented by the manger, the 
garden, and the cross. But born into the 
world a helpless infant, unfolding in physical, 
mental, and spiritual power under the laws of 
normal development, subject to the limitations 
and ills of humanity, his Godhead was not so con- 
spicuous as his humanity. The Divine glory 
which he had with the Father before the world 
was, was eclipsed by the robe of clay in which 
it was wrapped. Only a subdued brightness 
gleamed through the earthly vesture. But the 



248 Love Enthroned. 

time came when it was expedient for Jesus to 
take the second step, when his deity should 
burst forth, a full-orbed sun upon this dark 
world. To this end Christ withdraws the vis- 
ible, material form, in order that it may no 
more divert the eye from the full splendors of 
his Godhead (Godhood). He goes up on high 
and is glorified, and sends down the proof in 
the gift of the Comforter, whose great mission 
on earth is to "glorify," exalt, deify, the Son 
of God by a revelation of his divinity in the 
inmost consciousness of every one who loves 
him. This undoubted, assured knowledge of 
Jesus Christ as " God over all, blessed for ever," 
emboldened the apostles to preach, and to suf- 
fer shame joyfully, for his sake. This knowl- 
edge is described by St. John as comprising 
" all things." " But ye have an unction from 
the Holy One and ye know all things." All 
spiritual truth is centered in Jesus Christ. To 
know him by the anointing is to know "all 
things pertaining to life and godliness." To 
know Christ is to know the law, for love is the 
fulfilling of the law. " And ye need not that 
any man should teach you." The highest and 
most trustworthy cognitions are those of the 



Full Assurance of Faith. 249 

intuitions. The logic of Aristotle and Bacon 
cannot reach up to this knowledge of the Divine 
Jesus revealed in the very sanctuary of the soul 
by the Holy Spirit. Gal. i, 16. We cannot agree 
with Dean Alford, that those strong expressions 
of St. John are " so many ideal statements on 
Christian perfection," implying that believers 
in his day did not " have in living and working 
reality what they had in the ideal depth of 
their Christian life/' We cannot conceive of 
an assertion more positive and explicit of the 
perfect spiritual knowledge possessed by those 
whom he addresses in this epistle. They had 
what St. Paul craved for the Ephesians, " the 
love of Christ which passeth knowledge, " or 
intellectual comprehension or logical state- 
ment. 



250 Love Enthroned. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE EVIDENCES OF PERFECT LOVE. 

IN addition to the direct witness of the 
Spirit to the completeness of his work, 
(i Cor. ii, 12,) we have the following corrobo- 
rative evidences which may be appropriately 
styled the fruits of the Sanctifier : — 

I. Easy victory over sin. — In the justi- 
fied state there is victory, but after intense and 
painful struggles. Yet sometimes, in moments 
of weakness, sin takes the soul so by surprise 
that it is brought into condemnation. Victory 
on hard-fought battle-fields, with occasional 
defeats, is the usual experience of regenerate 
souls. But after the fullness of Christ's love is 
shed abroad in the soul, temptation greatly loses 
its power. An invisible shield quenches the 
fiery dart. The soul, surrounded by "the mu- 
nitions of rocks," understands what it is to be 
" kept by the power of God through faith." It 
has but to utter, " Get thee hence, Satan," and 
the Tempter flees in confusion. 



The Evidences of Perfect Love. 251 

It may take time for the entirely sanctified 
person to unmask Satan, to disrobe him of the 
angels robe of light. Jesus had no such neces- 
sity. His omniscient eye glanced instantaneous- 
ly through all disguises. But the souls of men, 
though they are all aglow with love to God, have 
no such intuitive insight into the moral char- 
acter of all acts. They must fall back upon 
their judgments. Abstract right may be an 
intuition, and, at the same time, right in an 
act may require careful deliberation or appli- 
cation of the reasoning faculty. This may 
cause delay and anxiety to know the path of 
duty, but no struggle to overcome inward an- 
tagonists to perfect rectitude. Just here is a 
good place to explain the singular phenomenon 
of two perfectly sanctified persons, like Paul 
and Barnabas, disagreeing in their conclusions. 
Their judgments of what is expedient differ, 
while both are actuated by perfect love to 
God and man. The impulse toward the known 
right is equally strong in both. They would 
die at the stake before they would swerve from 
the purpose of righteousness. But their orig- 
inal intellectual capacities, education, and cir- 
cumstances, which all have an influence upon 



2$2 Love Enthroned. 

their judgment, differ so greatly that tliey in- 
nocently arrive at widely different conclusions. 
This accounts for the fact, that professors of 
entire sanctification are sometimes severely 
criticized by non-professors of this grace for 
doing deeds which the superior moral train- 
ing of their critics would not let them do. For 
instance, the laws of one country may not regard 
as property the fruits growing wild in the field. 
The appropriation of such is as free to all as the 
sunshine and the rain. Another country may 
define such fruits as the property of the land- 
owner, and punish the unlawful appropriation as 
theft. An emigrant from the former land to the 
latter, though perfectly upright in his purposes 
and holy of heart, might without apostasy 
be convicted of theft unwittingly committed. 
Here is the appropriate field for the charity 
that " thinketh no evil." It was possible by 
Divine grace for Abraham to obey the com- 
mand, "Walk thou before me, and be perfect," 
while it would have been impossible, even with 
God's help, to walk before men and be perfect 
in their estimation. 

2. Oneness with Christ. — The advocates 
of an advanced Christian experience insist, with 



T 



'he Evidences of Perfect Love. 253 



great unanimity, that there is a well-defined 
line separating it from the former Christian 
life. We are often called on to state the 
specific difference — to draw the line between 
these two religious states ; hence the attempts 
to discriminate between the new birth and 
entire sanctification are some of them conclu- 
sive, and others unsatisfactory. We are not 
whetting our theological razor to assist at this 
hair-splitting; we need less theorizing and 
more exemplification — less dogma and more 
experience. 

Are there men and women now on earth 
living the so-called "higher life?" Theie 
are saints treading the earth day by day, vic- 
tors over the world and sin, " dead indeed 
unto sin," and " free indeed " from its very in- 
dwelling. It was not so with their former 
Christian state. Can they tell us what is the 
most conspicuous line running through their 
consciousness, separating these experiences. 
The unanimous testimony is, that it is a 
sense of oneness with Christ, contrasting most 
strongly with the former feeling of duality, or 
twoness, if we may coin a Saxon word, instead 
of borrowing from the Latin. We have heard 



254 Love Enthroned. 

of a converted Indian who came to the mis- 
sionary one day in great distress, saying, 
" There are two Indians inside of me— a good 
and a bad." He expressed what all Christians 
feel in their initial spiritual life. There is a 
painful distraction. The secret is, that self is 
still alive, and disputing with Christ the throne 
of the soul. Self has not learned the difficult 
lesson of perfect and joyful submission. There 
is an inward schism between the spiritual and 
carnal forces. The prayer of the psalmist has 
not been offered in faith, " Unite my heart to 
fear thy name." 

Octavius, who had been a triumvir, thought 
it for the interest of peace that the world 
should have but one ruler, and, styling himself 
Augustus, he became that ruler by the defeat 
of Mark Antony. It was found that a three- 
men power, or a two-men power, only pro- 
voked strife. It is certainly for your soul's 
peace, my dear reader, that you should hence- 
forth have but one sovereign. The one-man 
power is what you need — the God-man. Which 
will you have for your king ? Jesus, or the Bar- 
abbas of Self? Which will bring in genuine, 
eternal peace? The Prince of Peace. He is 



The Evidences of Perfect Love. 255 

able to dethrone and extinguish self as a foe 
to his reign. 

" But can I not have perfect peace under 
his rival ?" Yes, but not till Jesus is banished 
from his realm, and the Holy Ghost, his 
representative, has withdrawn, and conscience, 
God's vicegerent in the soul, has been de- 
throned. Then you would have the awful 
blessing of peace — the alarming tranquillity 
which presages the earthquake — the peace of 
an unwaking, endless stupor. Endless ? No ; 
death will dispel it, and set the worm, re- 
morse, to gnaw forever. Do not, my Chris- 
tian friend, try this way to peace. Jesus, the 
great peacemaker, is in thy heart, and offers 
to establish your perfect peace on an eternal 
foundation. He wishes to rule supreme ; he 
has been thrust aside by self, and with sorrow 
has he protested against the usurpation of 
another, knowing the miseries to which you 
will be reduced. You may not be distinctly 
conscious of a power in you, rivaling and an- 
tagonizing the Lord Jesus ; you have lived 
so long in the atmosphere of self that you 
do not recognize its presence. The hidden 
self will come forth from his hiding-place into 



256 Love Enthroned. 

the sunlight if you begin in earnest and in de- 
tail to consecrate all to Christ. You will hear 
a plea for this little self-indulgence, for that 
small interest to be untouched by King Jesus ; 
you will find a shrinking back from giving him 
full range through your whole being ; he may 
uncover some secret idol. 

That shrinking, dear reader, is self. You 
don't feel the shrinking now, because you are 
not earnestly attempting entire consecration. 
You are enjoying a kind of false peace. Self 
has sent a flag of truce to Christ, not intending 
an unconditional surrender, but a compromise. 
" Immanuel may reign over all my being, with 
certain trifling exceptions. I think that my 
sense of propriety is a little superior to his, 
therefore I wish to reserve the privilege of self- 
direction in some matters wherein others, by 
blindly following Christ's directions, have lost 
the good opinion of some cultivated people, 
and even made themselves unpopular. Then, 
again, there are certain principles of commer- 
cial morality which tend more directly to 
wealth than the high and impracticable ethics 
of the Sermon on the Mount. I always 
deemed it unfortunate for the success of Jesus 



The Evidences of Perfect Love. 257 

Christ's moral code that he had not a business 
education — that he had not worked his way 
up from a journeyman carpenter to a master 
builder, and become a millionaire by his 
shrewd management. He never rose in busi- 
ness because he was an impractical theorizer. 
Hence, there are some points in which his 
ethics have become a little obsolete : at any 
rate, almost every body thinks so, and there 
must be some good ground for their opinion ; 
therefore, it is not prudent to submit without 
reservation to his will ; it is not the short cut 
to riches nor to honors." 

To the reader who has not been made per- 
fectly one with Christ in will and desire, let 
me say, If you lay your ear close to the lips of 
Self, and listen to his soliloquy, you will find 
such whisperings of distrust respecting Jesus, 
whom you have theoretically acknowledged 
as " God over all, and blessed for evermore," 
and invited to dwell in your hearts, and exer- 
cise a general oversight over you. Alas, the 
number of such Christians is not small. They 
are the majority in nearly all our Churches. 
They are good and conscientious, and in the 

main dutiful, and are limping along toward 
17 



258 Love Enthroned. 

heaven. The great defect in their experience is, 
that they are not completely one with Christ. 
There are points on which they cannot trust 
him ; he is held back from completing his own 
ideal in their lives, because they interfere and 
insist on the alteration of his plans. He does 
not abandon them, but continues working, sad 
to see his own splendid and perfect plan 
marred by the impertinent antagonism of Self. 
The consummation which he most devoutly 
wishes, is to see this officious intermeddler 
nailed to his cross. The crucifixion of Self is 
the painful birth of the soul to the higher life 
— the life of perfect oneness with Christ. He 
who has entered into this rest will find the 
most difficult petition in the Lord's prayer — 
" thy will be done " — the easiest for the tongue 
to utter. 

3. Hence THERE IS NO APPREHENSION OF 
FUTURE ILL, and there is perfect contentment 
with our providential circumstances. We re- 
joice evermore, pray without ceasing, and in 
every thing give thanks. We thank God for 
our disappointments, not before they come, 
because we do not know then that they are in 
the will of God. But when they are thus 



The Evidences of Perfect Love. 259 

known^ the soul which is in full trust receives 
them joyfully. 

" 111 that He blesses is our good ; 
Unblessed good is ill ; 
And all is right which seemed most wrong, 
If it be his sweet will." 

4. Insatiable desire to communicate 

THE LOVE OF CHRIST TO UNBELIEVERS and to 

imperfect believers, with corresponding efforts 
to convince them of sin, and bring them to 
Christ. The anointed soul has full sympathy 
with David Brainerd, the missionary : " I long 
to be a flame of fire continually glowing in 
the divine service, preaching and building up 
Chrises kingdom to my latest, my dying hour." 
This desire springs up in the experience of par- 
don, but it does not become a passion inflam- 
ing all the soul like a mighty furnace, till love 
fills its utmost capacity. The feet of Jesus 
were ever hasting toward lost men. His 
mighty heart was ever yearning over the spir- 
itually blind and dead. It is natural that the 
fullness of love to Christ should bring us into 
sympathy with this dominant passion of his 
holy soul, and that our footsteps should ever 
after be toward the perishing. There is a grave 



26o Love Enthroned. 

mistake somewhere when a person imagines 
that he has mounted up to the plane of the 
"higher life " and feels no quickened impulse 
toward sinners dying in their sins around him. 
That ecstasy of delight must be spurious which 
inclines its possessor to sit still and selfishly en- 
joy the raptures of divine love, instead of go- 
ing forth to communicate and widely diffuse 
the joy. 

5. Increased beneficence, enlarged lib- 
erality, inevitably follow the blessing of per- 
fect love. The purse must be consecrated to 
the advancement of Christ's kingdom when the 
heart becomes the abode of the Sanctifier. 
But it must not be expected that there will be 
an indiscriminate outpouring of our money to 
all good causes. The judgment will still be ex- 
ercised in determining the best channel through 
which our benefactions may be poured. Some 
may magnify the importance of Christian edu- 
cation, while others may deeply feel the wants 
and woes of the pagan world. One may re- 
serve all his gifts for the poor, and another 
be inclined to schemes of Church extension. 
Now if this diversity of generous impulses does 
not find expression secretly in obedience to 



The Evidences of Perfect Love. 261 

the directions of our Saviour, there is afforded 
ample occasion for misjudging one another in 
respect to our liberality. Hence, groundless 
complaints have been made against some of 
the holiest persons. It is not to be expected 
that we shall all see alike in these matters. 
Here is the appropriate field for that charity 
which " hopeth all things." 

6. An astonishing insight into the 

HOLY SCRIPTURES and a daily HUNGER for the 
word of life. Gospel truth ceases to be vague 
and shadowy. It becomes real. A mysterious 
power unvails its meaning, and applies it to 
the soul. There is a voice within which at- 
tests the objective truth. An invisible inter- 
preter attends the reading of the sacred page, 
and "we discover wonders in God's law." 
These new beauties, unfolding evermore, so 
commend themselves to our hearts — they yield 
us so much strength and comfort — that we are 
never again troubled with doubts of the in- 
spiration of the Bible. The hungry man, when 
he finds bread that perfectly satisfies and nour- 
ishes him, has no difficulty with the sophistry 
which would prove that it was made of chaff 
and not of wheat. The higher life takes root 



262 Love Enthroned. 

in the deeper knowledge of God's word. It 
lives by every word which proceedeth out of 
the mouth of God. Its possessor becomes a 
homo unius libri, a man of one book. Elegant 
literature, though sparkling with rhetorical 
gems, affords no more nutriment to such a soul 
than the frostwork on the window satisfies the 
cravings of the wearied laborer. He may oc- 
casionally read Dickens or Scott, just as he 
may, for a few moments, look upon the beau- 
tiful tracery of the frost artist, but he feeds on 
the Gospel of the Son of God. The novelists 
and airy poets become more and more dusty on 
his shelves, while the Bible becomes more and 
more soiled and worn. 
7. The impulse 10 Christian activity 

has changed from DUTY to DELIGHT. " I will 
run the way of thy commandments when thou 
shalt enlarge my heart." Instead of dragging 
himself to duty, there is a free, spontaneous im- 
pulse moving him to render with gladness any 
possible service to his Master, not from fear of 
the law, but from love to the Lawgiver. There 
is a point between the earth and the moon 
where gravitation changes. A projectile from 
earth, passing that point into the superior at 



The Evidences of Perfect Love. 263 

traction of the moon, freely moves to meet it 
with ever-increased velocity. Thus the believ- 
er, lifted by the power of the Holy Spirit out 
of the attraction of the world, under the strong- 
er attraction of Christ, gravitates upward. He 
no longer needs a whip and spurs to urge him, 
but the magnetism of love draws him sweetly, 
yet mightily, onward toward the King in his 
beauty. 

" Sink down, ye separating hills ; 
Let sin and death remove ; 
'Tis love that drives my chariot wheels, 
And death must yield to love." 

8. Humility is marvelously increased. 

Pride, the primal sin and last to surrender, is 
extinguished. Love made perfect humbles the 
soul to the dust. When the Comforter makes 
his abode in us, our language is, " Lord, what is 
man, that thou art mindful of him ? and the son 
of man, that thou visitest him ? I am not wor- 
thy of the least of thy mercies. I am dust and 
ashes." Yet Satan may take advantage of this 
very humility to tempt the soul to a more sub- 
tle, yet more baneful kind of pride — spiritual 
pride. He will sooner or later suggest, * You 
are a peculiar favorite of heaven, few are so 



264 Love Enthroned. 

highly blessed, it is very proper that you should 
put a corresponding estimate upon yourself. 
You ought to prize yourself for what you really 
are." The presentation of such a temptation 
is no proof that the person does not love God 
with all his heart. But to yield to this sugges- 
tion is certainly to cast one down from the pin- 
nacle of perfect love. 

9. A CHRONIC FAITH. I use this word chronic 
to distinguish the abiding faith attending this 
blessing from the evanescent and spasmodic 
faith in lower states of experience. The one 
is the continuous flow of a fountain sending 
up its steady and copious stream, the other is 
the intermittent gush of the suction pump, 
ceasing when the force is no longer applied. 
In the one the divine element is predominant, 
in the other the human. Humanity is always 
inconstant. God is a changeless, perennial 
stream of power. It was of the continuity of 
this faith inwrought by the Holy Spirit poured 
out after Jesus should be glorified, that he 
spake, when, standing in the temple, he cried, 
" If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and 
drink. He that believeth on me, out of his in- 
most soul shall flow rivers of living water." All 



The Evidences of Perfect Love. 265 

his victories, all his graces, all his activities, all 
his beneficences, and all his testimonies, are 
rivers pouring forth from this well-spring of un- 
dying faith. In the justified state faith fre- 
quently gives way to doubt, but in the state of 
entire sanctification doubt is permanently ex- 
cluded. Hence, from the prominence of this 
fact, the experience is denominated by some, 
the full assurance of faith. 

10. JOY AND POWER are usual fruits of this 
blessing. But the joy may be intermittent, 
and the degree of power may not be produc- 
tive of marvelous effects in the estimation of 
man. Great apparent success may not attend 
our efforts. From some persons the fruits of 
their labors are wisely hidden in this life. But 
no loving soul is powerless in the sight of God. 
Measured by human standards, ministers with 
very little faith, and some with no grace at all, 
have been the apparent instruments in the 
promotion of great revivals ; whereas the great 
day will disclose the secret spring of that pow- 
er in the closet of some obscure, yet fully 
consecrated believer, whose public utterance 
seemed to fall powerless from a stammering 
tongue. 



266 Love Enthroned. 

A transitory joy may exist where the heart 
is not fully purged. A perfectly holy soul 
may, from the influence of the mortal body, 
be at times devoid of rapturous joy. Hence, 
this is not an infallible evidence of entire sanc- 
frifi cation. 

1 1. A VIVID RECOLLECTION OF THE SUCCESS- 
IVE STEPS. " If your soul has passed the bar- 
rier between you and this full salvation, my 
dear brother, you can mark the period when 
your inward corruptions were a burden intol- 
erable to be borne ; when you desired deliver- 
ance from them more than any thing besides ; 
when you resolved, in the strength of God, to 
seek this great salvation ; when it began to 
appear near at hand ; when you were able to 
consider it as present, and claim it as your own. 
You can recollect the revolution which then 
took place in the whole train of your views 
and feelings. How gloriously resplendent 
appeared the character of God, the cross of 
Christ, the way of holiness ! How easy it was 
to believe, to love, to obey; how small you 
seemed to yourself; how worthless all your 
best performances; how the world receded 
from your view, and heaven and glory appeared 



The Evidences of Perfect Love. 267 

to come down to earth ; how you desired that 
this heavenly state might be the common priv- 
ilege of all Christians, and how you immediate- 
ly began to talk of the great things God had 
done for you." * 

Reader, does this mirror your experience? 

* Peck's Christian Perfection. 



268 Love Enthroned, 



CHAPTER XV. 

TESTIMONY. 
" I testify the Gospel of the grace of God." — St. Paul 

A PHILOSOPHER has said, "The ex^ 
perience of one rational being is of inter- 
est to all who become cognizant of it." This 
is because we are so constituted as to be sim- 
ilarly affected by like causes. Let half a dozen 
of persons, far gone with pulmonary consump- 
tion, publish to the world their complete cure 
by the same remedy, and the glad news would 
flash across the continents and beneath the 
seas, irradiating with hope myriads of sick 
chambers. Hence the value of testimony. 
Justice, in her walk through the earth, leans 
upon this staff. The entire science of medi- 
cine and art of healing have been founded 
upon it. The pharmacopoeia has been filled 
through the attestations of cures. Who can 
better authenticate the healing than the healed 
patient? Who better than the cleansed soul 
can certify his spiritual transfiguration, and 
the power by which it was accomplished ? 



Testimony. 269 

Experience is one of the chief elements of 
evangelical power. On critical occasions 
St. Paul, the master logician, when liberty, or 
even life, hung on the balance of a Roman gov- 
ernor's will, and some most persuasive argu- 
ment was needed, told the simple story of his 
conversion from being a persecutor to a preach- 
er of the faith he once destroyed. In fact, his 
commission, three times renewed, was not to 
preach but to testify. " When the omnipresent 
Jesus," as Bishop Simpson graphically describes 
him, " standing as picket-guard for the little 
Church at Damascus," took Saul of Tarsus 
prisoner, he said to him, " I have appeared 
unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a min- 
ister and a witness both of these things which 
thou hast seen, and of those things in the which 
I will appear unto thee." Ananias assured him 
that he should be a "witness unto all men;" 
and years afterward, while slumbering in the 
castle of Antonia, a prisoner, the Lord Jesus 
stood by him and said, " Be of good cheer, 
Paul, for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusa- 
lem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome." 

Testimony is the most cogent argument. A 
herald is useful to make proclamation of the 



270 Love Enthroned. 

law, and of the will of the court, but, make 
way! here comes one more important to the 
ends of justice — an unimpeachable witness. 
All jurists tell us that one word of authentic 
evidence outweighs ten thousand words of pro- 
fessional pleading. The witness must speak, 
the plea may be dispensed with. The testi- 
mony can go to the jury without the argument, 
but it will be folly to send the argument with- 
out the testimony. We fear the modern 
Christian Church is making this sad blunder, 
when, respecting the question of full salvation 
in this life, she listens more attentively to the 
speculations of theorizers than to the declara- 
tions of witnesses attesting that Jesus is a com- 
plete Saviour. 

It is not often, as we know, that the witness 
and the advocate are, in our courts, combined 
in the same person. But all jurors know how 
much more weighty are an advocate's words, 
when, summoned from the bar to the wit- 
ness-stand, he, with uplifted right hand, sol- 
emnly swears to the facts. There is now 
no professional quibbling, no insincere and 
cunning speech. O if every Christian pulpit 
could be for only one Sunday converted from 



Testimony. 271 

an advocate's stand to a witness box, and each 
anointed preacher should say, " Come, and hear, 
all ye that fear God, and I will declare what 
he hath done for my soul," what a stir there 
would be in the unbelieving world ! We verily 
believe that they would give the verdict of 
truth to the Man of Calvary, " and falling down 
would acknowledge that God is with us of a 
very truth." The great want of the age is a 
witnessing Church and ministry. The want 
lying back of this is something to speak of — 
an overwhelming visitation of the Divine Spirit. 
"The Church of Christ, as it is visible in the 
world, exhibits nowadays much of the aspect 
worn by the nation of the Jews in the time of 
our Saviour ; there is, with an almost universal 
profession of Christianity, much Sadducean 
infidelity and licentiousness, as well as much 
Pharisaic display and outside godliness. It is 
only a few who, in hope of being like the Lord 
at his appearing, are now purifying themselves, 
as He is pure. There has been a great falling 
away from the faith — from the living, world- 
conquering faith. The nut-shell of orthodoxy 
remains, but the kernel of vital godliness has 
shrunk almost into a thing of naught. Indi- 



272 Love Enthroned. 

vidual and local revivals testify that the gift 
of the Spirit has not been withdrawn from the 
Church ; but the gift was made to the Church 
as a whole, and has not the Church as a wliole 
resisted, and grieved, and well-nigh quenched 
the Spirit ? " * To awaken and quicken the 
whole Church, every anointed soul is called to 
testify with tongue and pen to the reality of 
the Divine anointing, attainable now by all 
who seek for it with the whole heart, trusting 
in the promise of the Father for the mighty 
outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In all humility, 
and solely for the glory of Christ, the marvel- 
ous work of the Holy Spirit is put on record. 
Surely he who has had this experience has 
been led by a way which he knew not ! But 
the path is known now, and the retraced foot- 
prints may encourage some desponding soul : — 

" Footprints that perhaps another, 
Sailing o'er life's stormy main, 
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 
Seeing, may take heart again." 

In November, 1870, a college professor, after 
an earnest and persistent struggle, entered into 
a spiritual enlargement utterly inconceivable 

* Memoir of Hewitson. 



Testimony. 273 

before, a permanent spiritual exaltation and 
fullness which found an outlet through tongue 
and pen. Distant friends were notified by 
private letters. One of these was addressed 
to Gilbert Haven, editor of " Zion's Herald," 
who assumed to publish it to the world with 
an editorial preface, entitling it, The FULL- 
NESS of Blessing. The preface by the edi- 
tor is retained : — 

" Much is said about the Higher Life ; less 
is felt of its great fullness. An experience is 
worth a thousand theories. The following let- 
ter, written for private eyes, is worthy of note 
as a testimony to this Divine filling of the soul 
by the Holy Ghost. The writer is one of the 
first scholars and writers in the Church, holding 
high official position in one of her colleges, a 
man of great sobriety of temper and evenness 
of character. He has been a steadfast, devout 
Christian for many years. An anthracite coal 
he would be called by all his acquaintances. 
An anthracite coal on fire this letter shows 
him to be. Many who are incredulous as to 
the possibility of such experiences would not 
doubt the credibility of this witness, nor 

should it be doubted of many others. 

18 



274 Love Enthroned, 

" That there is a Pauline experience of the 
heights and depths of grace divine, that the 
Holy Ghost can now fall on the believer in 
fullness of power, it is impossible to doubt in 
the face of multitudinous testimony from all 
ages and branches of the Church. May this 
experience win many to a like consecration 
of faith and power. The familiarity of its style 
arises from its privacy. It will not make it any 
the less attractive. There is also a deprecatory 
vein as to past experience and efforts which his 
many admirers will not accept as quite the fact, 
his word having often been with power. — Ed. 

" ' I have experienced a most marvelous 
manifestation of the love of Christ to me. O 
the unsearchable riches of Christ ! Do you 
know how unspeakably precious Jesus is when 
you trust him fully ? My experience was never 
marked. I never could tell the day of my 
conversion. My evidence was chiefly an in- 
ference, rarely the direct testimony of the Spir- 
it. Hence my utterances have been feeble 
and destitute of power. But all this is gone 
by. God has so certified this blessed Gospel 
to my soul, that I shall no more blow the 
trumpet with an uncertain sound. 



Testimony. 275 

" ' Rev. Mr. Earle spent four days here a 
month ago. The spirit of his preaching, and 
his success, and his remarks at his farewell on 
what he styles " the rest of faith," set me think- 
ing and praying, and confessing the coldness 
of my heart, and my satisfaction in past days 
with the mere perfunctory performance of 
Christian duty. I began to pray for the bap- 
tism of the Spirit to enable me to carry on the 
revival which has broken out in the village. 
God answered my prayer most graciously. I 
am at times so overwhelmed with the love of 
God that I cannot stand the pressure on the 
earthen vessel, and have to beg God to stay 
his hand. 

" ' The joy is indescribable. I am a free 
man in Christ Jesus — " free indeed ; " free 
from the fear of man. I can approach any 
person anywhere. I am free in my utterance. 
My mouth is opened, my heart is enlarged 
toward sinners. I can't help preaching. As 
the boy said of the whistle, " It whistles it- 
self/' Every body is astonished at the com- 
plete and wonderful transformation through 
which I have passed. There is a new mean- 
ing to the hymns of Charles Wesley — especially 



276 Love Enthroned. 

to i Wrestling Jacob, " which I always admired 
aesthetically, but was never in experimental 
sympathy with. O how real the promises are! 
I have been treating them like our irredeem- 
able greenbacks, not representing gold to-day, 
but payable in coin at some indefinite future 
time. I have found out, to my unspeakable 
joy, that God never has suspended specie pay- 
ment ; that behind every word of promise 
there is gold coin in the treasury of heaven. 

" * I can't interpret the blessing ; whether 
it is the second or third, it certainly is the 
greatest that I ever received. It STAYS. It 
is very strange that my mouth should be 
filled with laughter, and my tongue with 
praises — the coolest and least demonstrative 
man in the Methodist Episcopal Church. 

"'Last Thursday, November 17, I think I 
went where Paul did when he heard things not 
lawful, not possible to utter. My whole be- 
ing, soul and body, was pervaded with the in- 
describable joy of the Holy Spirit. The nerv- 
ous sensations were delicious, a thousandfold 
more than any I ever experienced before. I be- 
lieve that on that day — though the Divine influ- 
ence had been descending for two weeks — my 



Testimony. 277 

great Joshua brought me in, and allotted me a 
portion in the mountain of God. If I should 
derive my theology from my feelings I should 
have to adopt one of the five points of Calvin, 

" But this I do find, 
We two are so joined 
He'll not live in glory and leave me behind." 

" ' The same feeling appears in " Wrestling 
Jacob ; " after his victory he exclaims : — 

" Nor have I power from Thee to move ; 
Thy nature and Thy name is Love." ' " 

This private letter, published anonymously, 
having been ascribed to another, who would 
have the ungracious task of disowning a work 
of grace unless the author should avow him- 
self, made it necessary to publish the following 

Christian Experience : — 

" I have been content with a daily confes- 
sion with the mouth, and private letters to my 
friends, carefully refraining from any appear- 
ance of seeking to be lionized in the public 
prints. But my friends urge me to run this 
risk for the strengthening of my brethren in 
this age, when a subtle skepticism respecting 
Christian experience is poisoning and paralyz- 
ing myriads of professed followers of Christ. 



278 Love Enthroned. 

At my conversion, thirty years ago, through 
weakness of faith, the seal of my justification 
was impressed so slightly, that the word Abba, 
my Father, was scarcely legible ; yet, in answer 
to a mother's prayers in my infancy, consecra- 
ting with conscious acceptance her son to the 
Christian ministry, I was called to preach, but 
called with a i woe unto me/ instead of an 
* anointing with the oil of gladness.' I will not 
dwell upon the unpleasant theme of a ministry 
of twenty years almost fruitless in conversions 
through a lack of an unction from the Holy 
One. My great error was in depending on the 
truth alone to break stony hearts. The Holy 
Spirit, though formally acknowledged and in- 
voked, was practically ignored. My personal 
experience during much of this time consisted 
in 

4 Sorrows, and sins, and doubts, and fears, 
A howling wilderness.' 

But an evangelist extraordinary power to awak- 
en slumbering professors and to bring sinners 
to the foot of the cross, came across my path. 
I sought to find the hidings of his power, and 
discovered that it was the fullness of the Holy 
Spirit enjoyed as an abiding blessing, styled by 



Testimony. 279 

him i the rest of faith.' I was convicted. 1 
sought earnestly the same great gift, but could 
not exercise faith till I had made public con- 
fession of my sin in preaching self more than 
Christ, and being satisfied with the applause of 
the Church above the approval of her Divine 
Head. I immediately began to feel a strange 
freedom daily increasing, the cause of which I 
did not distinctly apprehend. I was then led 
to seek the conscious and joyful presence of 
the Comforter in my heart. 

" Having settled the question that this was 
not merely an apostolic blessing, but for all 
ages, ' He shall abide with you forever/ I took 
the promise, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my 
name, He will give it you.' The l verily ' had 
to me all the strength of an oath. Out of 
the i whatsoever ' I took all temporal blessings, 
not because I did not believe them to be 
included, but because I was not then seek- 
ing them. I then wrote my own name in 
the promise, not to exclude others, but to be 
sure that I included myself. Then writing 
underneath these words, * To-day is the day 
of salvation/ I found that my faith had three 



280 Love Enthroned. 

points to master: the Comforter ; forme; now. 
Upon the promise I ventured with an act of 
appropriating faith, claiming the Comforter 
as my right in the name of Jesus. For several 
hours I clung by naked faith, praying and re- 
peating Charles Wesley's hymn, — 

4 Jesus, thine all- victorious love, 
Shed in my heart abroad/ 

I then ran over in my mind the great facts in 
Christ's life, especially dwelling upon Geth- 
semane and Calvary ; his ascension, priest- 
hood, and all-atoning sacrifice. Suddenly I 
became conscious of a mysterious power exeit- 
ing itself upon my sensibilities. My physical 
sensations, though not of a nervous tempera- 
ment, in good health, sitting alone and calm, 
were like those of electric sparks passing 
through my bosom with slight but painless 
shocks, melting my hard heart into a fiery 
stream of love. 

" Christ became so unspeakably precious that 
I instantly dropped all earthly good — reputa- 
tion, property, friends, family, every thing — in 
the twinkling of an eye, my soul crying out, — 

4 None but Christ to me be given, 
None but Christ in earth or heaven/ 



Testimony. 281 

He stood forth as my Saviour, all radiant in 
his loveliness, " chiefest among ten thousand.' ' 
Yet there was no phantasm, or image, or ut- 
tered word, apprehended by my intellect. The 
affections were the sphere of this wonderful 
phenomenon, best described as ' the love of God 
shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost/ 
It seemed as if the attraction of Jesus, the load- 
stone of my soul, was so strong that my heart 
would be drawn out of my body, and through 
the college window by which I was sitting, and 
upward into the sky. O how vivid and real 
was all this to me ! I was more certain that 
Christ loved me than I was of the existence of 
the solid earth and shining sun. I intuitively 
apprehended Christ. 

" My college class were just then discussing 
the subject of the intuitive cognitions. I began 
to apply Sir William Hamilton's tests of these, 
namely, that they are simple, incomprehensi- 
ble, necessary, and universal. The last adjec- 
tive, of course, could not apply to the intuitive 
belief of one individual, though subsequent 
observation abundantly demonstrates that all 
believers who fulfill the conditions required for 
awakening the spiritual perceptions have the 



282 Love Enthroned. 

same intuition of Christ.* But my conscious- 
ness testified that my certainty of Christ's love 
had the three first-named characteristics, that it 
was to me even a necessary truth, the contrary of 
which was as unthinkable as the annihilation of 
space. The last remarkable peculiarity remained 
more than forty days, after which I had hours in 
which I could conceive the contrary of the prop- 
osition, ' Christ loves me/ On such occasions 
my firm conviction of his love was not an in- 
tuition, but an inference from my past experi- 
ence, together with the absence of any feeling 
of condemnation. I no longer doubt Wesley's 
doctrine of the direct witness of the Spirit as 
distinct from the testimony of my spirit dis- 
cerning the fruits of the Spirit and inferring his 
presence and work. I cannot to this day read 
the promises without feeling a sudden but de- 
lightful shock of an invisible power sweetly ap- 
plying them to my heart. 

" Thus much I think is due to those who would 
study this manifestation of the Spirit from the 
stand-point of theology and mental philosophy, 
a point of view I myself have often wished that 
remarkable experiences could be seen from. But 

* See chapter on the Psychology of Christian Assurance. 



Testimony. 283 

language is wholly inadequate to express a man- 
ifestation of Christ which did not formulate it- 
self in words, but in the mighty, overwhelming 
pulsations of love. The joy for weeks was un- 
speakable. The impulse was irresistible to 
speak of it to every body, saint or sinner, Prot- 
estant or Papist, in public and in private. At 
the time of this writing, seven weeks from the 
first manifestation, the ecstasy has subsided 
into a delicious and unruffled peace, rising into 
ecstasy only in acts of especial devotion. I 
find no fear of man, nor of death. I can no 
longer accuse myself of unbelief, the root of 
all sin. What may be in me, below the gaze of 
consciousness, I do not know. I must wait till 
occasions shall put me to the test. It would 
not be wise for me to assert that all sinful an- 
ger — there is a righteous anger — is taken away 
till I have passed through a college rebellion, 
or something equally provoking. If sin con- 
sists only in active energies, I am not conscious 
of such dwelling in me. If sin consists in a 
state, as some with truth assert when they de- 
scribe original sin, I infer that I am not in such 
a state, from the absence of sinful energies 
flowing therefrom, and more especially from 



284 Love Enthroned. 

the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This has 
been accompanied with such a feeling of 
inward cleanness, that I doubt not that the 
Purifier has taken up his abode in the temple 
of my heart. But the direct testimony of the 
heavenly Guest is love, LOVE, all-consuming 
LOVE, flaming in the heart of Jesus — love to 
me. I feel that sin cannot abide the flames of 
this furnace kindled to such an intensity about 
me. If others should insist that it is the direct 
witness of entire holiness, I could not dispute 
the assertion, so assured am I, beyond a doubt, 
that, by the grace of Jesus Christ, I have lived 
to see the death of the old man, the extinction 
of i all filthiness of the flesh and spirit.' 

" My personal friends do not need to be in- 
formed that the doctrine of entire sanctification, 
as a specialty, has not been my hobby, but rath- 
er my abhorrence, in consequence of the imper- 
fect manner in which it has been inculcated 
and exemplified. Hence, if there is any thing 
in this experience confirmatory of that doctrine 
as a distinct work, considering my former atti- 
tude toward this subject, my testimony is some- 
thing like that of Saul of Tarsus to the truth 
of Christianity. If I have any advice to give 



Testimony. 285 

to Christians, it is to cease to discuss the sub- 
tleties and endless questions arising from en- 
tire sanctification or Christian perfection, and 
all cry mightily to God for the baptism of the 
Holy Spirit. This is certainly promised to all 
believers in Jesus. 

" O that eveiy minister and layman would in- 
quire the way to the upper room in Jerusalem, 
and there abide till tongues of fire flame from 
their heads ! " 

After walking in this marvelous light for the 
space of a year, the following testimony of 
the same person was published in order to 
magnify the grace of our blessed Lord Jesus 
and the power of the Holy Spirit. 

A YEAR WITH THE COMFORTER. 

" If ' the greatest debtor to grace may speak 
first,' I arise to testify to the unsearchable 
riches of Christ, and to the ' rapturous height 
of that holy delight/ which the abiding Com- 
forter bestows upon me, even me. It is a 
year this blessed 17th of November since 

* Down from on high the blessed Dove 

Did come into my breast, 
To witness God's eternal love — 
This is my constant feast.' 



286 Love Enthroned. 

" Such an anniversary cannot be permitted 
to pass by without the grateful erection of a 
stone of help, a monument of praise to God, 
1 a spectacle unto angels and to men/ So 
glorious was the visitation of the Spirit, and 
so joyful was my soul while entertaining the 
carrier dove of heaven, bearing the glad evan- 
gel of Chrises boundless, fathomless love, that 
both tongue and pen were kept busy in spread- 
ing the ineffable joy. That testimony seems 
to require another, lest any person, from my 
silence, may suppose that the fire then kindled 
has quickly burned out, like a basket of shav- 
ings, and left me in darkness. 

" There is another reason why I wish to re- 
appear for a moment on Christ's public wit- 
ness-stand. The ' new departure ' which the 
doctrine of full salvation has recently taken, is 
remarkable for the prominence which it gives 
to testimony, to the exclusion of speculative 
theories. The movement so providentially 
and powerfully begun will lose its momentum 
just in proportion as it becomes disputatious, 
and substitutes wrangling for witnessing. 

" Never before were there so many believers, 
of every denomination, honestly and earnestly 



Testimony. 287 

calling for light on the subject of the higher 
life. Therefore, let every one who has a 
heaven-lit torch now lift it high, and keep it 
aloft, that all may see the light and rejoice 
therein. i Blessed be God, even the Father of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, 
and the God of all comfort, who comforteth 
us in all tribulation, that we may be able to 
comfort them which are in any trouble, by 
the comfort wherewith we ourselves are com- 
forted of God/ Let there be laid before the 
Church, especially before souls panting after 
i all the fullness of God/ the exact transcript 
of each Christian consciousness under the illu- 
mination of the Holy Ghost, so far as language 
can be a vehicle of that which ' passeth knowl- 
edge,' and not only will souls in trouble be 
comforted, but there will be accumulated a 
mass of facts out of which some analytic 
mind — some theological Sir William Hamil- 
ton — may do what all systemizers have hith- 
erto failed to do, construct out of the Bible 
and experience a consistent and symmetrical 
science of Christian perfection. 

" When preconceived theories modify testi- 
mony, its value is proportionally diminished, 



288 Love Enthroned. 

This serious defect inheres in the statements 
of many, who, under a dogmatic bias, have 
unconsciously shaped their expressions to suit 
the demands of a supposed orthodox ideal. I 
suppose that it is not possible for me to divest 
myself entirely of the influence of opinions, 
and to detail in unmixed purity the changes 
which the transforming Spirit has wrought in 
my consciousness. Of this the reader may be 
assured, that as a witness on a most important 
question I will endeavor to speak the truth, 
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 
Let him who values his theories more than the 
truth, not expect me to color my statements 
to suit the complexion of his opinions. 

" In some important particulars my recent 
experience contradicts my own lifelong beliefs. 
Sharply defined transitions after regeneration, 
sudden uplifts in the divine life, had been ex- 
cluded from my creed as unphilosophical and 
unnecessary. I had never, though I had read 
such things in Christian biography, really be- 
lieved it possible for a soul to tabernacle on 
earth a whole year without a cloud, or a doubt, 
or a temptation, other than an occasional mo- 
mentary thrust of the adversary, easily parried 



Testimony. 289 

with the shield of faith. Twelve months ago 
I should have received with utter incredulity 
the statement that any one could utter, men- 
tally or orally, a doxology to Jesus three hun- 
dred and sixty-five days long, with no inter- 
mission save that of sleep, and that balmy 
sleep itself would often flee from the presence 
of a sweeter delight, the luxury of praise. I 
find my mistake corrected, that the witness of 
the Spirit, in its higher manifestations, is in- 
termittent. The reverse is true. It is inter- 
mittent in its lower manifestations ; in its 
highest it is constant. All the philosophies I 
find at fault in the assertion that the human 
mind cannot endure the strain of high joy for 
a long period ; and that the more intense, the 
more evanescent it is. 

" I have from the first moment till this hour 
been impressed with the permanence of this 
blessing, as if a ceaseless fountain had been 
opened in my soul. See John iv, 14; vii, 38, 39. 
The voice of Jesus to my inward ear is : — 

Mine is an unchanging love, 

Higher than the heights above. 

Deeper than the depths beneath, 

Free and faithful, strong as death.* 
19 



290 Love Enthroned. 

" Whatever this confidence may be called — 
whether the full assurance of faith or the full 
assurance of hope — as defined by Wesley in 
Tyerman's Life, vol. ii, page 491, I am con- 
vinced that it is attainable by all, though not 
necessary to saving faith. God has reserved 
to himself the prerogative of doing " exceeding 
abundantly above all that we ask or think " in 
the outpouring of his wondrous love, and the 
exhibition of the exceeding greatness of his 
power to us-ward who believe." 

" I have been catechised respecting the men- 
tal state, or act, immediately previous to the 
coming of the Comforter, whether there was a 
specific act of faith. I reply, that my soul 
had been for three weeks the furnace of in- 
tense desire, and it had been during that peri- 
od in the attitude of trust. I was, at the mo- 
ment preceding the great blessing, reviewing 
Christ's earthly life, and noting the grounds of 
faith which it affords, as I had often done be- 
fore. I did not at that time put forth a dis- 
tinct and specific energy of faith differing from 
that attitude of voluntary trust, in which I had 
been for several days. 

" I am convinced that a hungry, longing, ear- 



Testimony. 291 

nest soul, in the general attitude of trust, may 
be surprised, as I myself was, by the sudden 
unction of the Holy One. At no time did I 
believe that I received the desired blessing till 
I knew that it was mine. The promise in Mark 
xi, 24, was not opened to my faith then as it 
is now. I did for several days, either orally or 
mentally, assert that Christ is true, and that 
he is now offering the very boon which I crave. 
At length I reached a point where I was as- 
sured, beyond a doubt, that he would speedily 
come into blissful realization. Over and over 
again did I pray the hymn : — 

' Jesus, thine all- victorious love/ etc. 

" Pausing at the epithet ' all-victorious/ 1 
begged the mighty Saviour to conquer me 
wholly, and thoroughly reconstruct me from 
top to bottom, from center to circumference, 
and to leave not one disguised rebel lurking 
within. That prayer was graciously heard. 
So thorough was the conquest, that not one 
masked Ku-Klux has come forth from his 
hiding-place to torment my loyal soul, and to 
render a second war of extermination neces- 
sary. To be sure, I have not been tested by 



292 Love Enthroned. 

passing through a college rebellion, as 1 cau- 
tiously intimated a year ago, and I begin to 
think that I never shall pass through thio 
ordeal, if the Comforter dwells in the hearts 
of us professors. For there is always more or 
less pride at the bottom of both parties to 
every war. 

" A year ago I said that I did not know what 
was below the gaze of my consciousness. I 
still say the same, adding the testimony that 
the varied changes and perplexities through 
which I have since passed have failed to re- 
veal any proof that Jesus is not king over the 
domain of my unconscious, as he is over my 
conscious, self. I have been questioned re- 
specting my religious state previous to the 
Divine anointing, by persons interested in 
confirming the theory that I had then, for the 
first time, experienced the joys of pardoned 
sin. To them I reply, that I believe myself 
to have been in the pre-pentecostal state. It is 
objected that this is impossible eighteen hun- 
dred years after the effusion of the Holy Ghost. 
Perhaps those who doubt my testimony will ac- 
cept that of so eminent a theologian and deep- 
ly experienced a Christian as the ' seraphic 



Testimony. 293 

Fletcher." He says, vol. iii, page 171 : 'Con- 
verted sinners, or believers, are either under 
the dispensation of the Father, under that of 
the Son, or under that of the Holy Ghost, 
according to the different progress they have 
made in spiritual things. Under the dispensa- 
tion of the Father believers constantly experi- 
ence the fear of God, and, in general, much 
greater degree of fear than love. Under the 
economy of the Son, love begins to gain the 
ascendency over fear. But under the dispen- 
sation of the Holy Spirit, perfect love casteth 
out fear.' 

" This quotation abundantly justifies the as- 
sertion that I was in the pre-pentecostal state 
of Christian experience. I believe that I 
dwelt a long time in the dispensation of the 
Father, a shorter period in that of the Son, 
and that now, at length, by the grace of God, 
I have entered that of the Holy Ghost. In 
the first, I enjoyed the first element of the 
kingdom, righteousness or justification — dikai- 
osune — the act of the Father; in the second, 
peace, the legacy of the risen Jesus ; and in 
the third, joy, the endowment of the Holy 
Ghost To those who object to this assign- 



294 Love Enthroned. 

ment of distinct blessings to the persons of 
the Trinity, we would quote the apostolical 
benediction, where the same distinction is 
made, the communion of the Holy Spirit 
always being the climax. 

" Thus much theorizing seems necessary to 
make good my assertion respecting my pre- 
vious experience. A more practical question 
some soul propounds to me, ' How to keep 
the blessed Comforter?' He will keep him- 
self, and you too, if you will let him. ' Kept 
by the power of God through faith/ the human 
and Divine agencies beautifully blend. He is 
not so capricious as many imagine. He is 
in no haste to leave any bosom, after so long 
an endeavor to get an invitation to enter it. 
Nothing but sin can dislodge him. The soul 
which holds him by faith will be upheld by 
him. 

That beautiful device, a hand grasping the 
cross, with the motto, ' Teneo et teneor] 'I 
hold, and I am held/ expresses it all. Every 
day, yea, almost every hour, I find myself re- 
peating the couplet : 

" Thy grace can full assistance lend, 
And on that grace I dare depend? 



Testimony 295 

" The unwise query has been raised why I 
write my sermons if I am conscious of the 
indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the fountain of 
spiritual light. There is a vast difference be- 
tween the grace and the charisma, the theop- 
neustic gift of the Spirit conferred on the 
soul for the purpose of making it the organ 
or medium of revelation to the human race. 
The grace of the Spirit, while it floods the 
soul with light on its personal relations to God, 
communicates no dogmatic truth. Though it 
assists in the study and application of revealed 
truth, it does not modify the intellectual facul- 
ties, any more than it changes the manual 
dexterities of the craftsman. Hence, the Holy 
Spirit affords no dispensation from hard work. 
He is not bestowed as a premium to laziness. 
The preacher will yet be under the necessity 
of laboriously preparing the beaten oil for the 
sanctuary. But he will find this toil won- 
derfully alleviated by the removal of all in- 
ertia, and of every antagonism within him- 
self, and by the sweet delight of the labor 
of love. Often, with his Master, he will ex- 
claim, * My meat is to do the will of Him that 
sent me.' 



296 Love Enthroned. 

" Let me say, in conclusion, that my spirit- 
ual life is no longer like a leaky suction pump, 
half the time diy, and affording scanty water 
only by desperate tugging at the handle, but 
it is like an artesian well of water, ' springing 
up unto everlasting life. 

" * The fountain of delight unknown 
No longer sinks beneath the brim, 
But overflows, and pours me down 
A living and life-giving stream.' 

" The Scriptures are sweeter than honey. 
Prayer and praise are a delight ; the closet with 
the door closed is paradise regained ; the glo- 
ry of Christ has become the all-absorbing 
passion of my soul. Never before could I 
appreciate the paradox of Pascal, ' The things 
of this world must be known in order to be 
loved, but Jesus must be loved in order to be 
known.' My only apology for the use of the 
pronoun in the first person singular, instead 
of the impersonal and editorial we, is, that I 
have been relating my experience. 

" ' Glory to God the Father be, 
Glory to God the Son, 
Glory to God the Holy Ghost, 
Glory to God alone. 



Testimony. 297 

" * I need not go abroad for joy 
Who have a feast at home ; 
My sighs are turned into songs ; 
The Comforter is come.' " 

EXPERIENCE OF A PASTOR — FOUR YEARS OK 

WINGS. 

" They shall mount up with wings as eagles." 

To ascribe praise to our Lord Jesus, to 
glorify the Father, and to honor the ever- 
blessed Spirit, the promised abiding Comforter, 
in order that all other believers may be induced 
to trust fully in the Triune God, I give pub- 
lic testimony. There is, in the estimation of 
some persons, the feeling that such a testimony 
shows a lack of good taste, an absence of that 
refinement and delicacy of sensibility which 
instinctively shrinks from exposing to public 
view the inmost chamber of the soul where 
Christ reveals his unutterable name. I have 
always had sympathy with this feeling ; but I 
have learned with the great Apostle to " count 
all things but loss for the excellency of the 
knowledge of Christ Jesus." Was St. Paul im- 
modest in the frequent narration of his expe- 
rience? Then let me, for Jesus' glory, share 
in such shamelessness. During twenty-eight 



298 Love Enthroned. 

years I plodded wearily along the uphill path 
of spiritual life ; but four years ago the Holy 
Spirit endowed my soul with wings, and bade 
me mount upward with mine eye fixed upon 
the open gate of heaven. But jeven a bird of 
paradise may become weary in her long flight 
toward her native home, and fold her pinions 
and rest on some lofty mountain peak. In the 
" higher life " there is danger of dropping down 
from the wing to the foot again, unless the 
strength is constantly renewed by waiting upon 
the Lord. Faith is the atmosphere which 
bears up the soul. If the atmosphere becomes 
rare the eagle naturally sinks earthward. My 
soul has neither sought nor found an earthly 
object to rest upon. There is no weariness nor 
faintness. The air of the regions through which 
I pass is very bracing ; it buoys me up. Nor 
have gusts of adversity beaten me from my 
course, for God has permitted the head-winds 
of persecution to test the strength of my wings, 
Socrates, in the Gorgias of Plato, is repre- 
sented as saying, " If I happened to have a 
golden soul, do you not suppose that I would 
be glad to find the very best touchstone which 
men use in the testing of gold, which I might 



Testimony. 299 

apply to my soul to be assured that it was well 
cared for, and that no other ordeal was neces- 
sary ?" If the soul is golden, the touchstone 
to demonstrate its genuineness is indispensa- 
ble. God, in wisdom and goodness, very soon 
provides every one of his golden-souled chil- 
dren with some infallible touchstone. Perfect 
love will not long go untested. In my year 
with the Comforter, I had not been called to 
suffer distinctly for Christ from the opposition 
of that hostile spirit which nailed him to the 
cross and slew his apostles. The lion was not 
dead, but asleep. He awoke and glared upon 
me with fiery eyes, and gnashed upon me with 
his cruel teeth. My soul was calm as a sum- 
mer's evening, But when it pleased the 
blessed Master that I should be numbered 
among " the souls of them that were beheaded 
for the witness of Jesus and for the word of 
God " — to suffer reproach and vilification for 
the advocacy of an earnest Christianity against 
a proud and world-pleasing formalism — then 
it was that the river of joy which flows from 
the throne, clear as crystal, flowed through my 
heart as never before. It was a new experi- 
ence — the quintessence of delight. My soul 



300 Love Enthronel. 

bathed in an ocean of balm, which not only re- 
moved every pain, but made each wound the 
avenue of positive and ineffable joy, new in 
kind and in degree. The shouts of burning 
martyrs are no longer a mystery. I stagger 
no more at the account of the saints, u who 
took joyfully the spoiling of their goods." It 
does not now require an extra effort of faith to 
receive the promise of Jesus, u Blessed are ye 
when men shall revile you, and persecute you, 
and shall say all manner of evil against you 
falsely, for my sake." I will no more question 
the possibility of obeying this command to the 
persecuted, " Rejoice and be exceeding glad, 
for great is your reward in heaven/' The jubi- 
lant song from the Philippian jail is a phenom- 
enon as natural as the warbling of the bobo- 
link in a June morning. The wonder, how 
the beaten apostles could go forth from the 
council "rejoicing that they were counted 
worthy to suffer shame for his name," is all dis- 
pelled. No surprise to me are the words of 
Faber : — 



a 



The headstrong world, it presseth hard 

Upon the Church fall oft ; 
O then how easily thou turn'st 

The hard ways into soft." 



Testimony. 301 

Yet in this exultation of soul I have had one 
intense, all-consuming, and sometimes distress- 
ing, desire for spiritual power in such measure 
as shall break hard hearts all about me. As a 
preacher, my daily and hourly prayer has been 
the cry of St. Paul, " that utterance may be 
given unto me " commensurate with the great- 
ness of that salvation with which I have been 
personally saved. I have seemed to be plunged 
into the mid-ocean of the sweet waters of Di- 
vine love with a voice too feeble to reach the 
ears of my thirsty fellow-men wandering with 
parched tongues in distant Saharas, and to 
draw them to this shoreless, fathomless im- 
mensity of living waters. The great wonder 
and grief of my life during these four years 
has been the stolid unbelief of impenitent sin- 
ners, and the manifest skepticism of multitudes 
in the Church when the richness and fullness 
of the provisions of the Gospel are presented 
for their acceptance. Yet I find that I am not 
alone. Some sinners were hardened under the 
appeals of the great Apostle to the Gentiles, 
who had been caught up into the third heaven 
and heard things not lawful for him to utter ; 
and some believers were so " beguiled with the 



302 Love Enthroned. 

enticing words of man's wisdom ' as to loath 
the preaching of God's word "in demonstra- 
tion of the Spirit and of power." I have 
made this observation in order to guard 
against an error into which many are falling; 
who confound purity with power, and expect 
every fully-saved soul to become, in Christian 
efficiency, a Wesley, a Whitefield, or a Finney. 
Both purity and power are attainable by faith 
in Christ, but the degree of the latter seems, 
like various kinds of intellectual power, to be 
dispensed in a sovereign manner by ' the self- 
same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as 
he will.' In no marked degree has the endow- 
ment of power to convert sinners been divided 
unto the writer, though he has coveted it with 
intense desire, with strong cries and tears. 
Yet the withholding of this gift has not for 
a moment interrupted the repose of his soul 
in the blood of Christ, or shaken his tranquil- 
lity and peace, or diminished the "joy un- 
speakable and full of glory." In his power 
to edify believers and " to perfect the saints," 
and in the impulse to constant toil for Christ 
in proclaiming distasteful truths, he gratefully 
acknowledges a wonderful increase. 



Testimony* 303 



CHAPTER XVI. 

SPIRITUAL DYNAMICS. 

THE relation of the baptism or fullness of 
the Spirit to the efficiency of the be- 
liever, is a subject of intense interest to all 
Christians. Though much has been said on 
this question, there remains much more to be 
uttered, especially in view of the errors into 
which many good people have fallen. It is 
generally supposed that the copious effusion 
of the Spirit upon the believer to his utmost 
capacity will render him like an electric bat- 
tery, emitting such shocks of power that sin- 
ners will instantly tremble, and fall down and 
cry for mercy, as did the thousands under the 
pentecostal preaching of Peter. Such phenom- 
ena do sometimes occur in modern times, but 
they are exceedingly rare. We are convinced 
that these large measures of power in individ- 
ual believers would be more common were 
the whole Church full of faith in her glorified 
Head. But even then all would not be en- 



304 Love Enthroned. 

dowed with equal measures of spiritual power, 
all not having suitable spiritual capacity. 

Soon after Rev. Dr. Finney's conversion 
he received a wonderful baptism of the Spirit, 
which was followed by marvelous effects. His 
words uttered in private conversation, and for- 
gotten by himself, fell like live coals on the 
hearts of men, and awakened a sense of guilt 
which would not let them rest till the blood 
of sprinkling was applied. At his presence, 
before he opened his lips, the operatives in a 
mill began to fall on their knees and cry for 
mercy, smitten by the invisible currents of 
Divine power which went forth from him. 
When like a flame of fire he was traversing 
western and central New York, he came to 
the village of Rome in a time of spiritual 
slumber. He had not been in the house of 
the pastor an hour before he had conversed 
with all the family, the pastor, children, 
boarders, and servants, and brought them all 
to their knees seeking pardon or the fullness 
of the Spirit. In a few days almost every 
man and woman in the village and vicinity 
was converted, and the work ceased from lack 
of material to transform, and the evangelist 



Spiritual Dynamics. 305 

passed on to other fields to behold new tri- 
umphs of the Gospel through his instru- 
mentality. 

Another rare instance of extraordinary spir- 
itual power is that of Father Carpenter, of 
New Jersey, a Presbyterian layman of a past 
generation. A cipher in the Church till 
anointed of the Holy Ghost, he immediately 
became a man of wonderful spiritual power, 
though of ordinary intellect and very limited 
education. In personal effort, hardened sin- 
ners melted under his appeals and yielded to 
Christ. Once, in a stage-coach going from 
Newark to New York, he found six uncon- 
verted men and one believer his fellow-pas- 
sengers. He began to present the claims of 
Jesus, and so powerfully did the Spirit attend 
the truth that four were converted in the 
coach, and the other two after reaching New 
York. At his death it was stated that by a 
very careful inquiry it had been ascertained 
that more than ten thousand souls had been 
converted through his direct instrumentality. 
The following is a well-authenticated instance 
of his power, under God, of reaching difficult 

cases : — 
20 



306 Love Enthroned. 

"An excellent and conscientious woman had 
fallen into a delusion of Satan that she had 
blasphemed the Holy Ghost, and was beyond 
the reach of God's mercy. For twelve years 
this dreadful incubus had crushed her soul. 
She could never be persuaded to detail the 
circumstances under which she supposed that 
she had committed the unpardonable sin. 
Father Carpenter, hearing of her sad condi- 
tion, went to her house, insisted on the dis- 
closure of the facts, with the declaration that 
he would not leave the house till he died if 
she persisted in her silence, and thus suc- 
ceeded in opening her lips. Seeing that Satan 
had fastened the fiery dart of a lie in her soul, 
and kept it there for many years, and that no 
human power could pluck it out, in the pres- 
ence of the distressed woman he boldly ad- 
dressed Satan thus : — ' O thou father of lies, 
thou accuser of the brethren ! O thou god 
of this world, who dost blind the minds of 
men and hide from them the face of Jesus 
Christ ! O thou tempter of the Son of God, 
thou roaring lion, thou murderer from the 
beginning! wherefore hast thou kept this 
daughter of Abraham, lo, these twelve years ? 



Spiritual Dynamics. 307 

In the name of Jesus, come out of her, and let 
her go in peace ! ' Under this bold rebuke 
of the devourer the snare was broken, and the 
good woman came out of the captive's cell 
shouting praises to God for her deliverance." 
Here is a degree of spiritual power rarely seen 
in the Church. 

But it is evident that there have been be- 
lievers just as full of the Holy Spirit, who 
have had no such power to reach and save 
others. No man in modern times had larger 
views of Christ and of Christian privileges in 
the dispensation of the Spirit than Samuel 
Rutherford, who lived in Scotland in the sev- 
enteenth century. His " Letters," the joy of 
all advanced believers, are full of Christ. The 
superlatives in the English language are ex- 
hausted to express his supreme love to the 
adorable Son of God, " a rose that beautifieth 
all the upper garden of God — a leaf of that 
rose, for smell is worth a world" " If it were 
possible that heaven, yea, ten heavens, were 
laid in the balance with Christ, I would think 
the smell of his breath above them all. Sure 
I am that he is the far best half of heaven ; yea, 
he is all heaven, and more than all heaven : 



308 Love Enthroned. 

and my testimony of him is, that ten lives of 
black sorrow, ten deaths, ten hells of pain, ten 
furnaces of brimstone, and all exquisite tor 
ments, were all too little for Christ if our suf- 
fering could be a hire to buy him." Here is 
the testimony of one whom " Christ led up to 
a notch of Christianity that he never was at 
before ; " whose experience in the highest alti- 
tude of the " higher life " was one constant 
outgush of rapturous praises. Yet in his min- 
istry no extraordinary power was manifest. 

Two years after being settled at Anworth 
he writes : " I see exceedingly small fruit of 
my ministry. I would be glad of one soul to 
be a crown of joy and rejoicing in the day 
of Christ. I have a grieved heart daily in my 
calling." This is not a solitary case. Many 
eminently holy men have failed to produce 
immediate effects in the conversion of sinners. 
The fault was not with the thoroughness of 
their consecration, nor in their faith. They 
walked with God, and were filled with the 
Spirit; but the power to fasten saving truth 
upon multitudes of souls was not given to 
them of God. They do wrong to write bitter 
words of self-condemnation, and to bewail in 



spiritual Dynamics. 309 

tears the absence of this kind of power. God 
gave to Rutherford another kind of efficiency, 
which is to-day working in the Church, train- 
ing believers up to the " measure of the stature 
of the fullness of Christ. " It costs more to 
keep a soul in the love of Christ than it doe< 
to bring him to Christ. It is, therefore, really 
a higher gift. The great work of the ministry 
is the " perfecting of the saints," and the power 
that effects this, though not so conspicuous in 
the eyes of men, may be more excellent in 
the sight of God. 

Evangelistic or converting power is by no 
means commensurate with strength of faith 
and fullness of the spirit or outgushing emo- 
tional experience. Unusual success in this 
direction requires that there be, in addition 
to entire consecration to God, a peculiar con- 
stitution of the sensibilities, and a personal 
magnetism sanctified by the Holy Ghost. It 
is not derogatory to the Creator to say that 
he endows men with this magnetic power 
for this very purpose, not that it may be 
prostituted to selfish or Satanic uses, but 
that it may be subsidized by the Holy Spirit 
and used as a spiritual force to push forward 



310 Love Enthroned. 

Christ s kingdom. Instead, therefore, of vainly 
struggling for a gift not designed for us, let 
us employ to the utmost the gift of which we 
are possessed, even if it does not glare like a 
meteor upon the gaping world, nor cause our 
names to resound through the trumpet of 
fame. 

Our theory of spiritual dynamics is this: 
The Holy Spirit sheds abroad love in the 
believer's heart. Love is power. This pow- 
er is always efficient to conquer sin, and in 
its higher degrees to overcome self. But its 
effect upon others is modified by our tem- 
perament and mental constitution. Some are 
designed by nature to be, when surcharged 
with the Spirit, like galvanic batteries of a 
thousand-cup power, electrifying vast multi- 
tudes with the shock of saving Gospel truth ; 
while others, endowed constitutionally with a 
smaller capacity for the exercise of immediate 
suasive influence, are more largely gifted in 
the direction of a well-balanced intellect, 
adapted to instruct and edify believers — the 
chief function of the pastoral office. See Eph. 
iv, 11-13. The history of the Church, both 
apostolic and modern, sustains this view. Peter 



Spiritual Dynamics. 311 

was the preacher on the day of pentecost, not 
by chance, but by Divine purpose. Thomas 
could not have been substituted with the 
same results. His feebler grasp of truth, 
smaller spiritual caliber, and inferior personal 
magnetism, could not have been the channel 
through which the floods of spiritual life 
and power were borne to the multitude of 
dead souls. The quick and generous impulses, 
the inflammable sensibilities, the re-invigorated 
faith and ardent love of Peter, recently gra- 
ciously restored to a sense of the love of Jesus, 
were the divinely-appointed aqueduct through 
which the first full outgush of the water of 
life should deluge the thirsty earth. Nor 
would Philip, with his materialistic turn of 
mind, nor even John, with his contemplative 
and subjective cast, though aflame with love 
to Jesus, have been just the man to carry the 
Gospel to the head-quarters of Cornelius, and 
be the medium through which the Holy Ghost 
should fall upon all his household. It was the 
providential arrangement that both Jews and 
Gentiles should receive the first outpouring of 
the Spirit through Peter, because he was the 
best medium of this great blessing. 



312 Love Enthroned. 

Modern days have witnessed the career of 
great evangelists — Whitefield, Wesley, Finney 
Caughey, and Earle — through whom multi- 
tudes have been aroused from the sleep of sin 
and awakened to newness of life, to be after- 
ward under the care of thousands of less con- 
spicuous but not less useful " pastors and 
teachers/' having also for their work other 
gifts and energies of the Spirit. While, there- 
fore, every one should earnestly covet the best 
gift, he should not rest satisfied till he has 
received the grace of the Holy Ghost in the 
plenitude of his purifying and inspiring effi- 
cacy. Then he should thankfully employ the 
gift bestowed, and not in vain repinings covet 
the more showy gift of his fellow-laborer in the 
Lord's vineyard. 

In conclusion, we cannot be too well on our 
guard against the mistake of inferring great 
grace from great apparent usefulness, and vice 
versa. Men with very little grace, and some 
with none at all, have been very successful in 
awakening slumbering sinners ; while holy men, 
in the most intimate communion of the Koly 
Ghost, have toiled on for years in labors appar- 
ently fruitless. I say apparently, because the 



Spiritual Dynamics 313 

whole chain of sequences is badly tangled, and 
it is impossible to trace the invisible footsteps 
of each man's influence. Paul may plant, and 
Apollos water, but God giveth the increase. 
He may see more fidelity and sacrifice in the 
humble water-carrier than in the dignified seed- 
bearer, and proportion his rewards accordingly. 
The chief effect of the spirit-baptism is to 
secure strength of impulse and continuity of 
effort in the worker himself. Love makes all 
toil for its object a delight, and furnishes a mo- 
tive for constant activity in behalf of others. 
We have recently heard a venerable bishop 
quoted as saying that " a revival may occur at 
any place where there are God and a Methodist 
preacher." We understand by this that every 
preacher, who is as holy and as believing as he 
ought to be, may, at will, at any time and in 
any place, see the simultaneous conversion of 
sinners. The necessary inference is, that all 
who do not constantly witness this are living in 
a cold and semi-backslidden state. This infer- 
ence is afflicting thousands of Christian minis- 
ters who enjoy the fullness of the abiding Com- 
forter, Both the inference and the assertion 
from which it is drawn are untrue. The great 



314 Love Enthroned. 

work of a preacher in a certain place may be 
almost wholly within the Church, to save those 
who are but slightly healed, and to fill the mem- 
bership with spiritual power to such a degree 
that they may act with saving efficacy en the 
impenitent long after he has passed from that 
to another field of labor, or to his final reward. 
God has varieties of work and different agencies, 
and it is just as foolish for the hand to say to 
the foot, " You might be a hand if you only 
had faith," as to say, u I have no need of thee." 
When we hear such extravagant assertions we 
are inclined to say " Amen 'to a wish recent- 
ly expressed in our hearing, " O for a baptism 
of common sense ! " 

We cannot conclude without exposing and 
refuting the widely prevalent and mischievous 
error of estimating the usefulness of a preacher 
solely by the number of penitent seekers who 
crowd his altar and receive baptism at his 
hands. This great and glorious work may be 
done while neglecting to instruct and build up 
believers, leading them on from first principles, 
the milk for babes, to that advanced experience 
of the perfected believer who requires strong 
meat for his spiritual sustenance. Thus his 



Spiritual Dynamics. 315 

Church may be increasing in quantity and de- 
creasing in quality at the same time. The real 
power of a Church may decline under a re- 
vival preacher. He may be repeating the folly 
of the priest who undermined the temple in 
his eagerness to get coal to keep its altar fires 
burning. Methodists especially cannot be too 
often told that the hidings of spiritual power 
are not found in the last census report. " Not 
by might, {a host in the Hebrew,) nor by power, 
but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." Zech. iv, 6. 
The people who, in these modern times, have 
largely taken the appointing power in their 
own hands, should understand that in clamor- 
ing for a preacher who may make the greatest 
stir in their community, and secure the larg- 
est rental of the pews, and in passing by the 
man through whom the highest spiritual pu- 
rity and power of the Church may be attained, 
they are not wise. A Church whose members 
are all aflame with the fullness of the Spirit 
will always afford a healthful attraction to the 
unconverted, and will always be making ag- 
gression upon the unbelieving world. " Star 
preachers " are the poorest possible substitute 
for a sanctified Church. 



316 Love Enthroned. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

STUMBLING-BLOCKS IN THE KING'S HIGH WAV, 

THE largest of these lies before the very 
gate of this highway: — I. Full salva- 
tion, as an experience, is begirt with specula- 
tive difficulties. Metaphysical quiddities per- 
plex and bewilder many believers, and they 
never emerge from the fog into the clear 
atmosphere of truth till their hearts are 
filled with all the fullness of God. The puri- 
fied heart clarifies the head. We can never 
philosophize ourselves into that " perfect love " 
which " casteth out all fear that hath torment." 
Faith is the only door through which God 
enters the soul. Cease philosophizing and take 
up the great work of believing. " This is the 
work of God, [which God approves,] that ye 
believe on Him whom He hath sent." No sin- 
ner would ever find Jesus if he should stub- 
bornly seek him with the lantern of reason, 

refusing the lamp of faith. No imperfect be- 
liever can grasp Jesus as the complete Saviour 



Stumbling-blocks in the Highway. 317 

so long as he leans upon speculative reason 
as a supplement of his defective faith. Pride 
of intellect, the subtilest form of pride, is keep- 
ing thousands of Christians from that higher 
knowledge of God which is obtained only by 
climbing up the ladder of faith. It is not nec- 
essary for the penitent sinner to be able to de- 
fine repentance with theological exactness be- 
fore he repents of sin, nor to have unquestion- 
able views of the atonement in its relations to 
God and to man. All that he is required to do 
is, to abandon every other hope and plea, and 
to cry, " For me, for me, the Saviour died." 
It is not necessary for any soul to discriminate 
intellectually between regeneration and entire 
sanctification, or between the stream of love 
shed abroad by the Spirit of adoption and the 
ocean of love which the abiding Comforter 
pours around the purified soul, in order to en- 
ter upon this great salvation. As it is enough 
for the penitent to know that he is guilty, and 
Jesus can pardon, so it is enough for the long- 
ing Christian to know that he is hungry, and 
that there must be perfect satisfaction some- 
where in the universe correlated to that intense 
and painful appetency. It is sufficient for hiro 



318 Love Enthroned. 

to know that God is a satisfying portion, and 
to insist that he should completely satisfy 
our spiritual cravings, as he has abundantly 
promised. 

We find in some honest minds a theoretical 
difficulty which constitutes a stone of stum- 
bling in the way of their seeking full salvation. 
It is the notion that the grace of perfect love 
is of the nature of a charism, or special gift of 
the Holy Ghost, dispensed by the Father ac- 
cording to his own will, and hence not attain- 
able by all believers. 

Are there not instances in which the full- 
ness of the Spirit, or perfect love, is dispensed 
in a sovereign manner without compliance 
with the usual conditions ? We dare not say 
that there are not; for, (i.) We read in the 
Scriptures of one who was to be filled with the 
Holy Ghost from his mother's womb. (2.) We 
believe that the souls of infants, defiled by in- 
born depravity, are, without faith on their 
part, entirely cleansed before death by the 
blood of sprinkling because they are included 
in the new covenant which is ratified by that 
universal atonement which saves all souls which 
do not willfully reject it by unbelief. (3.) For 



Stumbling-blocks in the Highway. 319 

the same reason we believe that all justified 
souls, all persevering believers in Jesus Christ, 
who, through imperfect apprehension of the 
"exceeding greatness of his power* "to save 
to the uttermost, " are painfully conscious that 
they are not cleansed from all inward unright- 
eousness, are, before death, entirely sanctified 
by the sovereign will of Him who stands pledged 
" to finish the good work which he has begun ' 
in them, and " to present them faultless before 
the presence of his glory with exceeding joy." 
Nevertheless we must be careful not to fall 
into the great error of supposing that a bless- 
ing sometimes sovereignly bestowed is not 
attainable by all who seek it in the way pre- 
scribed in the Holy Scriptures. We are not 
to suppose that because God fed Elijah by the 
ravens, and the Israelites with manna from 
heaven, the ordinary and regular mode of ob- 
taining supplies by sowing and reaping is no 
longer available to the human race. Says 
Mr. Wesley, " God's usual method is one thing, 
but his sovereign pleasure is another. He has 
wise reasons for hastening and retarding his 
work. Sometimes he comes suddenly and un- 
expectedly, sometimes not till we have long 



32o t,ovE Enthroned. 

looked for him." Yet Wesley strongly and 
constantly urges all the justified to press for- 
ward and grasp this greatest prize this side 
of glory, saying that " it is neither wise nor 
modest to affirm that a person must be a be- 
liever for any length of time before he is ca- 
pable of receiving a high degree of the Spirit 
of holiness/' 

The arbitrary bestowment, in rare instances, 
of the Holy Spirit in the fullness of his power 
for the accomplishment of some great work in 
the spiritual kingdom, has led our non-Armin- 
ian brethren in past days to regard this high 
blessing as a charism, a special gift, not attain- 
able by every earnest seeker. Not a few Ar- 
minians who repudiate, with great zeal for the 
honor of the impartial God, the insinuation 
that the graces of repentance, pardon, and 
adoption are dispensed only to a favorite few 
elected to life from eternal ages, are, on pure- 
ly Calvinistic grounds, excusing themselves 
from strenuous and persistent endeavors to 
obtain entire sanctification by imagining that 
only those receive full salvation before death 
whose constitutions were peculiarly constructed 
for its reception. This as effectually para- 



Stumbling-blocks in the Highway. 321 

lyzes effort as the old doctrine of the con- 
tinuance of inbred sin till Death, the great 
sanctifier, comes to the aid of Jesus. To ex- 
hort a thousand to seek the higher life be- 
cause it is possible that one of that number 
— the ratio fixed by this theory — has the in- 
herent qualities necessary for its attainment, 
sounds very much like advice to invest in 
a lottery ticket which has one chance in a 
thousand of drawing the prize. But this expe- 
rience of perfect love is not a race, where here 
and there one of a thousand lawful racers re- 
ceives the crown. The blessed Jesus has for 
every head, even in the present life, a diadem 
resplendent with those precious stones called 
by Mr. Fletcher " a spiritual constellation 
made up of these gracious stars — perfect repent- 
ance, perfect faith, perfect humility, perfect 
meekness, perfect self-denial, perfect resigna- 
tion, perfect hope, perfect charity, for our vis- 
ible enemies as well as for our earthly rela- 
tions, and, above all, perfect love for our invis- 
ible God, through the explicit knowledge of 
our Mediator, Jesus Christ." This crown, O 
ye generation of worldly professors, ye busy 

tribe of muck-rakers, intent upon your straws, 
21 



322 Love Enthroned. 

the Angel of the New Covenant, the adorable 
Son of God, is holding over each of your heads 
and begging you to wear as the badge of your 
present sonship and future kingship unto the 
Lord God Almighty. Look up, and see and 
grasp this crown designed to adorn your earth- 
ly life before that life has vanished like a vapor, 
and you have irretrievably lost the crown of 
graces on earth fitting for a more resplendent 
crown of glory on high. 

Some good Christian people are alarmed at 
what they deem the incipient fanaticism of 
those who testify that, through the abiding of 
the Sanctifier in their hearts, they feel no prone- 
ness to sin. This is another stumbling-block 
which should be removed. We apprehend 
that a little attention to the meaning of the 
terms " prone " and " proneness " will remove all 
cause for alarm. Turning to Webster's Dic- 
tionary we find that prone signifies " bending 
forward, inclined, not erect, headlong, running 
downward ; applied to the mind or affections, 
usually in an evil sense, as prone to intemper- 
ance." Wesleyanism has always taught that 
the believer may be graciously delivered from 
that sin which is described in the seventh of 



Stumbling-blocks in the Highway. 323 

Romans as " another law in my members war- 
ring against the law of my mind, and bringing 
me into captivity to the law of sin which is in 
my members." 

There is no difference on this point between 
the advocates of the theory of gradual sancti- 
fication and those who preach the possibility 
of an instantaneous deliverance from this prone- 
ness to sin. There would be just ground for 
alarm were any persons in the present state of 
probation proclaiming that they had attained 
a condition of grace in which they were no lon- 
ger liable to sin. There is a very great differ- 
ence between the possibility of sin and prone- 
ness to it. Adam in Eden came from his 
Maker's hands with no proclivity toward dis- 
obedience, yet there was that possibility of sin- 
ning which is implied in free agency. The 
same is true of the angels in their first or pro- 
bationary estate. But the entirely sanctified 
soul is neither angelic nor Adamic, but is hu- 
man, with all the disabilities of powers crippled 
and dwarfed by sin. Hence, his liability to sin 
is grounded on both his free agency and on 
these disabilities. If you ask how a perfectly 
holy soul may sin, you strike upon the vexed 



324 Love Enthroned. 

question with which theologians and philoso- 
phers have wrestled for ages — the origin of sin. 
To give a reason for sin is to justify it. Sin is 
the most unreasonable thing in the universe. 
Yet it is possible for the holiest soul in proba- 
tion to perform that unreasonable act. The 
most that grace can do for us here is to enable 
us to abstain from sin — " posse non peccare" as 
the old theologians express it. We may ap- 
proximate, but in this world shall never reach, 
the state of inability to sin — " non posse peccare." 
Practical inability to sin is attained in that 
fixed state of character in which holy souls will 
exist after death, when all the motives are so 
manifestly preponderating toward virtue that 
sin is a glaring act of suicide, from which the 
recoil is as immediate as that of a sane man 
from precipitating himself down a precipice. 
We have used the word practical to indicate 
the certainty of the continued obedience of 
souls after probation, confirmed in holiness, and 
yet, as free agents, theoretically free to fall. 
There is another Latin formula by which the fa- 
thers used to express the awful state of character 
toward which impenitent sinners are all hast- 
ening, lurid foregleams of which we see in the 



Stumbling-blocks in the Highway. 325 

present life — u non posse non peccare" inability 
not to sin. May not this self-induced and cul- 
pable inability to obey the law of God be the 
ground of the final sentence to everlasting 
punishment ? 

An exhaustive discussion of the relation of 
a completely sanctified soul to the possibility 
of sinning, involves the theory of temptation. 
Some teach that sin enters the soul when the 
sensibilities are stirred by the cognition of the 
forbidden object by the intellect. We are not 
of that class. The activity of the emotional 
nature in the presence of its proper objects is 
just as inevitable as that of the perceptive fac- 
ulties. An apple presented to the gaze of a 
hungry child necessarily awakens, not only a 
perception, but a desire. This desire is as 
innocent as the impression on the retina, or 
the cognition in the mind. Sin comes in 
when the will indulges the desire, or even fos- 
ters it against the remonstrance of conscience. 
Yet this state of excited sensibility in the pres- 
ence of a forbidden object is full of peril, for 
here is where sin is conceived. " Lust when it 
is conceived bringeth forth sin." Into this re- 
gion the Sanctifier enters, and does his work, by 



326 Love Enthroned. 

exterminating every incentive to sin which is 
culpable in itself, such as pride and malice; by 
preventing the improper excitement of the in- 
nocent sensibilities, and by reinforcing the will, 
and inclining it to obey the mandates of the 
moral sense, the eye of which is now purged from 
the film of sin. The abiding Comforter is, there- 
fore, the keeping power within the soul The 
vigilance enjoined by our Saviour is obligatory 
upon the entirely sanctified, and consists in that 
habit of faith which holds the soul in commun- 
ion with God, and links it to that spiritual force 
which gives it constant victory, "being kept 
by the power of God through faith unto salva- 
tion." Hence we indirectly, yet most effect- 
ually, watch against all sin, while we maintain 
that believing attitude of soul which retains 
the Holy Spirit in the fullness of his purifying 
and keeping power. A rupture in the conti- 
nuity of this life of faith is the breach through 
which the forces of Satan enter and recapture 
the city of Mansoul. He has already passed 
over the boundary between Christian discre- 
tion and fanaticism who imagines that St. Paul 
did not write for him, " Let him that thinketh 
he standeth take heed lest he fall," and that 



Stumbltng-b locks in the Highway. 327 

our Saviour did not have in view the highest 
state of grace attainable under the Gospel 
when he said, "What I say unto you, I say 
unto all, watch/' 

" Hang on His arm alone, 

With self-distrusting care, 
And deeply in the Spirit groan, 

The never-ceasing prayer." 

We cannot commend the scruples of those 
who say that they have reached a religious ex- 
perience in which they cannot join with the 
congregation in the use of every hymn in our 
excellent collection. I can blend my voice 
with that of every worshiping assembly in 
singing hymns expressive of every phase of 
experience. I can sing the language of the 
penitent, because, though conscious of forgive- 
ness, I wish to remember with gratitude the 
miry pit from which my feet have been taken. 
I would not for my closest devotion select, — 

" What peaceful hours I once enjoyed ! 

How sweet their memory still ! 
But they have left an aching void 

The world can never fill : " 

yet I sing these words in order to increased 
thanksgiving to God for filling this "aching 



328 Love Enthroned. 

void." For the same reason, while conscious 
that all the currents of my soul have been 
graciously made to flow heavenward, I may 
properly sing, " Prone to wander." In public 
no one worships for himself alone, but for the 
benefit of all the congregation. 

2. There are also practical difficulties. How 
may I consecrate all to the Lord, and yet re- 
tain the control over all ? How, for instance, 
can I surrender all my property to God and 
still retain some of it for life's uses? The 
question is pertinent. No man can live with- 
out appropriating something to his own per- 
sonality. Property is one of the great natural 
rights with which we have been invested by 
our Creator. We could not exist without it. 
What are we to do when we consecrate pos- 
sessions to the Lord ? Not to shovel our 
money into the streets, or to pour it indis- 
criminately into the treasuries of the nearest 
eleemosynary institutions, but to become 
Christ's stewards for the faithful custody and 
expenditure of this property, making it ac- 
complish the greatest possible good in the 
well-being of men and the glory of Christ. So 
much as we can spare from our business and 



Stumb ling-Blocks in the Highway. 329 

the proper maintenance of our families we 
must make immediately productive for good 
in some department of Chrises service, for the 
Lord at all times condescends to use conse- 
crated sut stance. But so much as is requisite 
for the conduct of our business and decent 
support of those dependent on us may be re- 
tained and administered solely for the glory 
of Him who gave himself for us. Here we 
must depend each on his own judgment under 
the illumination of the word and the Spirit of 
God. 

How may I know that I have laid all on 
the altar ? Self generally rallies on some one 
point — defends itself in some last ditch. When 
that is surrendered, the struggle is felt to be 
over. We know that we have yielded and 
hung out the white flag, the token of our ca- 
pitulation. Besides, with all honest souls God 
is under covenant to reveal to them the state 
of their hearts. It is the office of the Holy 
Spirit to hold up a mirror and to furnish a 
lamp with which we may see our exact visage. 



330 Love Enthroned. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

GROWTH IN GRACE. 

WE are exhorted to grow in grace and in 
the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Some 
tell us that we find the true philosophy of 
Christian growth by reversing this order, and 
putting the knowledge of Christ first, as the 
means of increasing in grace. But the order 
of the apostle — grace first and knowledge sec- 
ond — is the most philosophical. We grow in 
the knowledge of Christ through the heart, 
and not through the head. We do not know 
Jesus till we love him, and the more we love 
the more intimate our knowledge of him. The 
more we familiarize ourselves with the perfect 
character of Jesus, the more we shall admire 
him, just as by studying the works of Angelo 
we come to admire him the more. But admi- 
ration is not love. It kindles no furnace-glow 
in the affections ; it impels the soul onward 
through no losses and labors, self-denials and 
persecutions, to the martyr's stake. As the 



Growth in Grace. 331 

character of Christ folds its splendors beneath 
the long and earnest gaze of the student, he 
may be growing esthetically by familiarity with 
so many moral beauties, and he may become 
more perfectly grounded in his theological 
beliefs respecting the Divinity of the man of 
Nazareth, and yet he may, in his own heart, 
be refusing to receive and to enthrone him as 
his rightful king. 

We advance a step further, and say that 
growth in grace, while accompanied by increas- 
ing power to abstain from actual sin, has no pow- 
er to annihilate the spirit of sin, commonly called 
original sin. The revelation of its indwelling 
is more and more perfect and appalling as we 
advance from conversion. Hence, in Calvin- 
istic writings especially, we find that the meas- 
ure of true piety is self-abhorrence. The more 
entire the consecration, the more vile in their 
own eyes do eminent saints appear. This 
standard of piety is a peculiarity of all the tru- 
ly devout souls who were taught to believe 
that there is no power to deliver from inborn 
depravity this side of the grave. To these 
persons a piety which is not self-loathing and 
self-condemning is as contradictory as a piety 



332 Love Enthroned. 

which is not penitent. But the sinless Jesus 
exhibited the marvelous proof of an impenitent 
piety. May not they who have washed their 
robes in the blood of the Lamb stand forth, 
even on earth, as specimens of a piety which 
glorifies God without self-vilification ? Does 
God get the highest revenue of glory from us 
while we perpetually proclaim that the blood 
of Christ fails to reach the root of evil in our 
natures? If not, then the self-loathing style 
of piety, like that of David Brainerd in his 
early ministry, who saw so much corruption in 
his heart that he wondered the people did not 
stone him out of the pulpit, is a mere initial 
and rudimentary form, reflecting not the high- 
est honor upon its Author. 

But the fact remains undisputed, that in all 
Christian experience, whether under Calvinian 
or Arminian doctrines, growth in grace reveals 
and magnifies that remaining inward corruption 
which it has no power entirely to remove. In 
the advanced yet not entirely sanctified believer, 
the spiritual perception is keener, the sensibility 
to sin more delicate, and hence more painful. It 
is the experience of the Christian world through 
all ages that the converted soul never outgrows 



Growth in Grace. 333 

this taint in its texture and substance So 
strong is the belief of the Church on this 
point that many have asserted that the cure of 
the spirit of sin is impossible in this life. On 
the other hand we have the testimony of thou- 
sands, that by faith in the all-cleansing blood 
of Jesus Christ they were instantaneously, com- 
pletely, and permanently delivered from all those 
inward proclivities toward sin which formerly 
gave them so much pain, so that they can in- 
dorse the testimony of the now translated Cook- 
man two years before he " swept through the 
gates," — " I, Alfred Cookman, am washed in the 
blood of the Lamb." Here are two classes of 
witnesses — the whole body of imperfect believ- 
ers, attesting the presence of inward corruption 
which they do not completely outgrow, and a 
goodly number in full trust in Christ, affirm- 
ing with lip and life that they were instanta- 
neously delivered from " the body of this death." 
Both classes witness to the same truth — de- 
praved inclination in the justified soul is not 
outgrown by spiritual development, but killed 
by the power of the Holy Ghost through a 
specific act of faith. But this spiritual devel- 
opment by growth is the necessary preparation 



334 Love Enthroned. 

for this destruction of inborn sin. The power 
of the Holy Spirit is exerted only through 
faith, and this faith is possible only when we 
are conscious of a need of cleansing from all 
inward tendencies to sin. This consciousness 
is awakened by the increasing clearness of our 
spiritual perceptions under the illumination of 
the Holy Spirit. As Dr. Tyng says, " There 
is no calendar containing the length of time 
necessary for the conversion of the sinner/' so 
there is no limit in time for this preparation for 
the work of entire sanctification. It may be 
an hour after regeneration, or the soul may be 
so slow in apprehending its privileges in Christ 
Jesus that years and decades may roll by before 
" faith grasps the blessings she desires." 

We do not deny that incipient believers may, 
and do, in their gradual spiritual unfolding, 
mortify and diminish the remains of sin linger- 
ing in them after justification. What we affirm 
is, that the complete eradication of inbred sin 
after this period of decay is by the direct ener- 
gy of the Sanctifier, whose interposition is spe- 
cially invoked. This is his great office in the 
economy of salvation. His glory he will not 
give to another. " The Lord your God is a 



Growth in Grace. 335 

jealous God." The Spirit of Truth will not 
let growth or development usurp his function 
and wear his honors. Hence the moment of 
entire sanctification is usually attended by an 
unmistakable demonstration of the power of 
the Holy Ghost, marking it as the most mar- 
velous and memorable event in the soul's his- 
tory this side of glory. We do not deny that 
there may be successive operations of the Holy 
Spirit, or baptisms culminating in the grand 
finale — the extinction of sin and the fullness 
of God. 

Says Rev. J. Fletcher : " Should you ask 
how many baptisms or effusions of the sancti- 
fying Spirit are necessary to cleanse a believer 
from all sin, and to kindle his soul into perfect 
love, I reply, that the effect of a sanctifying 
truth depending upon the order of the faith 
with which that truth is embraced, and upon 
the power of the Spirit with which it is applied, 
I should betray a want of modesty if I brought 
the operations of the Holy Ghost and the 
energy of faith under a rule which is not ex- 
pressly laid down in the Scriptures." " If 
one powerful baptism of the Spirit i seal you 
unto the day of redemption, and cleanse you 



336 Love Enthroned. 

from all [moral] filthiness/ so much the better. 
If two or more be necessary, the Lord can re- 
peat them." " I may, however, venture to 
say, in general, that before we can rank among 
perfect Christians we must receive so much of 
the truth and Spirit of Christ by faith as to 
have the pure love of God and man shed abroad 
in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given unto us, 
and to be filled with the meek and lowly mind 
which was in Christ. And if one outpouring 
of the Spirit — one bright manifestation of the 
sanctifying truth — so empties us of self as to 
fill us with the mind of Christ and with pure 
love, we are undoubtedly Christians in the 
full sense of the word." 

Says Mr. Wesley : " The generality of those 
who are justified feel in themselves more or 
less pride, anger, self-will, and a heart bent to 
backsliding. And till they have gradually 
mortified these, they are not fully renewed in 
love. God usually gives a considerable time 
for men to receive light, to grow in grace, to 
do and to suffer his will before they are either 
justified or sanctified. But he does not in* 
variably adhere to this. Sometimes he ' cuts 
short the work/ He does the work of many 



Growth in Grace. 337 

years in a few weeks ; perhaps in a week, a 
day, an hour. He justifies or sanctifies both 
those who have done or suffered nothing, and 
those who have not had time for a gradual 
growth either in light or grace. God may, 
with man's good leave, do the usual work of 
many years in a moment. He does so in a 
great many instances. And yet there is a 
gradual work before and after that moment. 
So that one may affirm that the work is grad- 
ual, another that it is instantaneous, without 
any manner of contradiction. " 

The entire sanctification of all persever- 
ing believers before death, without a con- 
scious act of faith, is hinted at in the above 
quotation. The grounds of our faith in this 
particular are the Divine promises unto those 
who are in covenant relations with God. He 
stands pledged to the persevering believer to 
bestow upon him eternal life : " This promise 
involves all the qualifications requisite to ad- 
mission to a holy heaven. Being confident of 
this very thing, that he which hath begun a 
good work in you will perfect (Greek) it until 

the day of Jesus Christ/' Phil, i, 6. 
22 



338 Love Enthroned. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 

MY DEAR FELLOW-BELIEVER IN CHRIST: 
You have honest objections to the ex- 
perience of entire sanctification as a distinct 
blessing. Let me help you to remove them 
You may be stumbling over the glaring im- 
perfections of some who profess to be walking 
in this higher path of Christian life. In the 
first place, remember that impenitent men are 
using the same argument against all our en- 
deavors to turn them to Christ. You invari- 
ably tell them that Christianity is liable to be 
counterfeited by hypocritical professors; that 
all valuable things are exposed to base imita- 
tions ; and that the most valuable is the most 
exposed. Please apply your own logic to 
yourself when reasoning on the question of 
the higher Christian life. 

Again, the Holy Spirit, in his most intense 
illumination, does not insure infallible moral 
judgments. John Newton, while master of a 



Objections A nswered. 3 39 

slave-ship, blinded by the darkness of his times, 
said that while enjoying intimate communion 
with God, " he never had the least scruple as 
to the lawfulness of the slave-trade ; " and the 
seraphic piety of George Whitefield did not 
deter him from pleading before the trustees of 
Georgia for the introduction of slaves, on the 
ground of " the advantage of the Africans/' 
Hence a man whose heart is full of love, and 
whose intellect is darkened by ignorance, may 
appear unconscientious to one favored with 
high moral culture. 

You should constantly bear in mind this fact, 
that a man can never appear above the criti- 
cism of his fellow-men. Did Jesus Christ, the 
absolutely sinless man, escape hostile criticism? 
Was he not accused of being a demoniac, a 
wine-bibber, a Sabbath-breaker, a Beelzebub, 
and a subverter of the law? The difficulty 
was not in Jesus, but in his green-eyed critics. 
Perhaps this is the solution of your perplexity 
about the imperfect exemplifications of the 
love " that passeth knowledge/' God once 
said to Abraham, " Walk before me and be thou 
perfect/' He did not command him to be 
perfect in the estimation of fallible men. Sup- 



340 Love Enthroned. 

pose that Abraham had interpreted the com- 
mand to include men as well as the heart- 
searching Jehovah? He is commanded to go 
to Mount Moriah, and to offer Isaac in sacri- 
fice. He goes and exhibits to God a heart 
perfectly obedient, as proved by the severest 
test. God is satisfied. But suppose that some 
of Abraham's jealous neighbors wonder what 
the mysterious three days' journey means, and 
that they follow on the patriarch's track afar, 
and, at last, they see him actually seize his son 
and cruelly bind him hand and foot ; and then, 
O horrible ! he draws out from his belt a great 
sheath knife, and raises it on high and at- 
tempts to plunge it into the throbbing heart of 
innocence. But something seemed to prevent 
the wicked purpose — the spies are too far away 
to see what it was — but they saw enough of 
Abraham's harsh conduct in his family to sat- 
isfy them that his profession to be an espe- 
cial " friend of God " is a stupendous piece of 
hypocrisy. " Perfection on earth," say they, 
" is all a myth ; we have proved it." Yet, 
while this damaging misconstruction of Abra- 
ham's conduct is whispered from one to anoth- 
er of the neighboring Canaanites, the patriarch 



Objections Answered. 341 

is in the enjoyment of the inward testimony 
that his ways please Jehovah ; he walks before 
him and is perfect. It may be thus with many 
a living friend of God, maligned of men, while 
approved of Heaven. 

False professions of this blessed experience 
should be expected, and due allowance should 
be made by all candid minds. But where 
there is a secret disrelish for an experience so 
high, it is natural to magnify such instances 
out of all due proportion to the number of the 
genuine professors, as wicked men magnify 
the hypocrisies in the Christian Church till 
they hide the multitude of true Christians. 

Are you stumbled at the fact that many seek 
the fullness of Divine love and do not find ? 
Do not many feebly seek regeneration and 
fail ? There are no instances of persons seek- 
ing with their whole heart, with an unappeas- 
able hunger and a tireless persistence, who 
have not received this greatest of Divine 
benefactions. In the distribution of his spir- 
itual blessings God is no respecter of persons. 
"Every one that asketh receiveth." 

Fanaticisms have attended the profession 
of this high grace. True. Extremists and 



342 Love Enthroned. 

unbalanced minds have abused justification by 
faith. Yet this doctrine resounds in all our 
churches. In all attempts to promote experi- 
mental godliness there is danger that some 
one may go astray from the path of sobriety. 
Our Protestantism, which accords to every 
soul the right of studying the Bible and of ac- 
cess immediately to God without the interven- 
tion of a Latin-mumbling priest, must run the 
risk of more or less abuse of freedom, and 
eccentricity in doctrinal belief. There is no 
cure but the iron railroad track of papal infal- 
libility prescribing the exact grooves in which 
all religious thought and devotion shall run. 
The remedy is a thousand-fold worse than the 
evil. The fanaticisms which have attended 
the people who have devoted themselves 
wholly to Christ, and who have been filled 
with the fullness of the Spirit, have been 
greatly exaggerated by the imaginations of 
unsympathizing enemies. They are not half 
so disastrous as the heresies that spring up in 
a cold and worldly Church, void of the Spirit 
of Truth. 

Again, the people who profess holiness are 
generally unpopular. They are secretly hated. 



Objections Answered. 343 

A very accurate observer of human nature has 
suggested the reason. He asks and answers 
this question : " Are we not apt to have a 
secret distaste to any who say they are saved 
from all sin?" Answer: "It is very possible 
we may, and that upon several grounds ; part- 
ly from a concern for the good of souls, who 
may be hurt, if these are not what they pro- 
fess ; partly from a kind of implicit envy at 
those who speak of higher attainments than 
our own; and partly from our natural slowness 
and unreadiness of heart to believe the works 
of God."* This answer could very easily be 
intended to include other reasons for this dis- 
taste. A holy life is a rebuke to all unholiness. 
Jesus was a perpetual rebuke to the Jews. In 
the intense light of his pure life, their spots 
and stains were made manifest through the 
whitewash of ceremonialism. Their hatred of 
the light was turned against the light-bearer, 
and Jesus of Nazareth was the best-abused 
man of his times. In this respect the servant 
must not expect to be above his Lord. A 
person entirely dead to the world, and thor- 
oughly alive unto Christ through every fiber 

* Wesley's " Plain Account of Christian Perfection." 



344 Love Enthroned. 

of his being, will make all conformers to this 
world so uncomfortable that they will begin 
to hate him, and to pick all manner of flaws in 
his life. They are not willing to give up their 
idols, and holiness comes to kindle a destroy- 
ing fire among them. They are averse to 
strenuous effort, to earnest wrestlings with 
God at Peniel, and hence they dislike those 
who point to the sunlit heights of life above 
the clouds, and urge them to mount up thith- 
er, as disturbers of their repose. Again, since 
all love to God is in antagonism to the spirit 
of this world, the higher the degree the more 
intense that antagonism. 

Another reason may be found in the activity 
of Satan, who seeks to plunder the Gospel of 
that element which gives it the highest effi- 
ciency in its warfare with his kingdom. He 
blinds the eyes of them that believe not, lest 
the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ shine 
unto them. He succeeds so well with un- 
believers that he applies the same method to 
believers, blinding their eyes to their highest 
Gospel privilege, the fullness of the Spirit, lest 
the light of this blessing should gladden their 
eyes, strengthen their hearts, and intensify 



Objections Answered. 345 

their zeal against his kingdom. Says John 
Wesley, in a letter to a Christian woman re- 
specting her preacher, in 1771 : "I hope he is 
not ashamed to preach full salvation, receiv- 
able now by faith. This is the word which 
God will always bless, and which the devil 
peculiarly hates ; therefore he is constantly 
stirring up both his own children and the 
weak children of God against it." Hence the 
difficulty which the great Head of the Church 
has in keeping this doctrine in the pulpit. It 
dropped out of the English pulpit, and Meth- 
odism was raised up to bring it back. Wesley, 
true to the great light, " the grand deposition 
intrusted to the Methodists/' found his preach- 
ers inclined to abandon this precious theme. 
Even now, after the inquiry on this subject 
among the laity has become so general, the 
majority of preachers pass over the subject 
like a slurred note in music, as if it was a demi- 
semi-quaver in the jubilant song of our Chris- 
tianity, and not its very key-note. 

Some believers may be warped by the in- 
fluence of those who are mistaken in their 
profession of this blessing. Many, quickened 
and gladdened by some manifestation of the 



346 Love Enthroned. 

Saviour's love, jump to the conclusion that 
they are entirely sanctified through the full- 
ness of love, shed abroad in their hearts, and, 
under injudicious advice, rush into a declara- 
tion of full salvation before they have the wit- 
ness of the Spirit to this great work, (i Cor. 
ii, 12.) Such persons soon become what Mr. 
Fletcher styles " land-flood " or freshet "pro- 
fessors," left high and dry by the evanescent 
emotions of which they are the subjects. 

The injudicious presentation of this blessing 
by some of its advocates has contributed to 
the eclipse of faith in its reality. Mount Sinai, 
instead of Mount Calvary, has been taken for 
the pulpit, and the terrors of the Lord have 
been denounced upon the Lord's children, 
although heirs of God, and joint heirs with 
Jesus Christ. Let not this offend you. The 
wise counsel of the founder of Methodism has 
not always been heeded in preaching on this 
subject, "Always by way of promise ; always 
drawing rather than driving." Thus injudi- 
cious advocates have awakened prejudice. All 
these causes combined have almost wrested 
this doctrine as a great vital, practical truth 
from the pulpits of Christendom, and driven it 



Objections Answered. 347 

into select meetings in parlors ; from the can- 
dle-stick to the bushel. O Lord ! how long, 
how long, must this precious light be hidden 
from the faith of thy people ? ,? Speedily lift 
it up from under the bushels to the candle- 
sticks, there to shine till its splendors blend 
in the brightness of thy coming ! 

Are you afraid that if you embrace Jesus as 
a whole Saviour you will lose your broad sym- 
pathy for the whole body of believers and be- 
come clannish? Are those who have found 
full salvation inclined to clannishness from 
choice or from necessity ? Is there not such 
a chilly temperature in many Churches that 
ardent believers can no more dwell safely in 
them than they can in a sepulcher? They 
prefer the light and warmth of a sympathizing 
Christian fellowship. Suppose, now, that all 
the Church were rejoicing in the increased 
grace given to each victorious soul, and, as in 
the case of St. Paul who had been caught up 
to the third heavens, they were glorifying God 
in him, we should hear no more of the segre- 
gation of those who are fully saved, than we 
hear in the New Testament Church of the 
withdrawal of the Spirit-baptized from the neo- 



348 Love Enthroned. 

phytes who had not yet received the Holy 
Ghost since they believed. 

My dear brother or sister in Jesus, the fault 
may be more in your prejudice, your apathy, 
your love of the world, and lack of consecra- 
tion to Christ, than in the souls drawn together 
by the mighty magnetism of love to Christ, 
the ruling passion of their bosoms. Do you 
not suppose that the Jews accused the disci- 
ples of clannishness when they persisted in 
their ten days* upper-room meeting before 
pentecost, and afterward in their breaking 
bread from house to house ? The cure for the 
fault-finding Jew would have been to secure 
the pentecostal blessing, and feel the mighty 
attraction of Christian love. Your remedy is, 
to attain that perfect love which will bind you 
to all believing souls with a threefold cord. 

But this intense fellowship, which has been 
stigmatized as clannishness, may be one of the 
strong scriptural evidences of Christian purity. 
Hear what St. John says will invariably re- 
sult when a number of fully-consecrated souls 
walk arm in arm with Jesus, robed in the spot- 
less linen of his righteousness : " But if we 
walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have 



Objections Answered. 349 

fellowship one with another, and the blood of 
Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." 
Those in whom the bond of Christian commun- 
ion is so weak that Church sociables must be 
resorted to for the promotion of Church feel- 
ing in the absence of true spiritual sympathy, 
which died with the forgotten prayer-meeting 
and the disbanded class-meeting, may well 
wonder at the mysterious magnetism which 
draws together devout persons, and holds them 
with hooks of steel, without ice-cream, oysters, 
segars, or other sensuous attractions of the 
club-room. 

Let that Church which is vexed with a 
clique devoted to the higher Christian life 
take the following course, and the clique will 
be killed and buried beyond hope of resur- 
rection. Let them no longer forsake the as- 
sembling of themselves together, but exhort 
one another daily, while with one accord and 
in one place they seek to be filled with the 
Spirit. Then let them give free expression to 
His voice within them, not by a hired quartette, 
but by speaking to themselves " in psalms, and 
hymns, and spiritual songs," making melody in 
their hearts to the Lord. (Eph. v, 18, 19.) Let 



350 Love Enthroned. 

them evince the genuineness of the Spirit-bap- 
tism by a life ever victorious over the world 
through faith in Jesus Christ, a beneficence 
which comes from " first giving yourselves unto 
the Lord," and a daily practice in harmony with 
the moral code of the Gospel. Under such 
treatment clannishness would speedily disap- 
pear, and the longest-lived " holiness meeting" 
would not survive a month. Again, you are 
stumbled by professors of a full trust in Christ, 
who still keep their purse-strings closely 
drawn. The secretaries of our various bene- 
volent societies do not make this indiscrim- 
inate charge against those who have professed 
to find Jesus a complete Saviour. They know 
that recently, in consequence of the revival of 
this doctrine and experience, living springs of 
beneficence have been opened which are pour- 
ing constant streams into the Lord's treasury. 
Here and there a narrow-minded man has not 
been brought up to the standard, either because 
his intellect has not been sufficiently enlight- 
ened or his heart copiously anointed. 

But you see no reason why you, after a 
score of years in the average Christian life, 
should rein up your soul to this one definite 



Objections A nswered. 351 

aim — full salvation through the blood of Jesus 
Christ — and go through a mighty struggle to 
attain that which only a minority of the justi- 
fied profess to receive before they are laid on 
the bed of death. You think that if such a 
glorious experience had been designed for you 
you would have been led into it long ago, es- 
pecially since in your daily prayers you have 
constantly prayed for the fullness of the Spirit. 
It may be that a subtle skepticism has kept you 
from vigorous efforts to grasp this great prize, 
which you might have seized in any day of 
your past Christian life, if you had sincerely 
believed in Chrises power to do this work, and 
distinctly aimed at it with all the intensity of 
spirit of which you were capable. The fact 
that you have gone so long without this pearl 
of great price is a reason why you should now 
earnestly seek it ; that thus both your own hap- 
piness and your usefulness to your fellow-beings 
may be increased, and your God honored. 
The heaven on earth of heart purity cannot be 
entered by chance. There must be a definite 
aim uniting all the forces of the soul. " And ye 
shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search 
for me with all your heart." Jer. xxix, 13. 



3$2 Love Enthroned. 



CHAPTER XX. 

AN ADDRESS TO THE YOUNG CONVERT — THE 

HIGHER PATH. 

MY BROTHER OR SISTER IN CHRIST JE- 
SUS : — Permit an older soldier to offer 
a few words of advice to a new recruit in the 
army of the Lord. An ancient writer has 
wisely said, that there have been from the be- 
ginning two orders of Christians. The one 
live a harmless life, doing many good works, 
abstaining from gross evils, and attending the 
ordinances of God, but waging no downright 
earnest warfare against the world, nor making 
strenuous efforts for the promotion of Christ's 
kingdom, nor aiming at special spiritual excel- 
lence, but at the average attainments of their 
neighbors. The other class of Christians not 
only abstain from every form of vice, but they 
are zealous of every kind of good works. They 
attend all the ordinances of God. They use all 
diligence to attain the whole mind that was in 
Christ, and to walk in the very footsteps of 



An Address to the Young Convert. 353 

their beloved Master. They unhesitatingly 
trample on every pleasure which disqualifies 
for the highest usefulness. They deny them- 
selves, not only of indulgences expressly for- 
bidden, but of those which by experience they 
have found to diminish their enjoyment of 
God. They take up their cross daily. At the 
morning's dawn they cry, " Glorify thyself in 
me this day, O blessed Jesus !" It is more 
than their meat and drink to do their heav- 
enly Father's will. They are not Quietists, 
ever lingering in secret places delighting in 
the ecstacies of enraptured devotion ; they go 
forth from the closet, as Moses came from the 
mount of God, with faces radiant with the 
divine glory; and, visiting the groveling and 
sensual, they prove by lip and life the divine- 
ness of the Gospel. Men tremble before them 
as Satan in Paradise Lost, when he first saw 
the sinless pair in Eden, " trembled to be- 
hold how awful goodness is." 

Next to the power of Jesus, the living 
Head, these earnest believers preserve and 
perpetuate the Church from age to age. The 
secret of their strength is, that they, by the 

guidance of the Spirit, found the King's high- 
23 



354 Love Enthroned. 

way up the summit of Christian holiness. 
They strove, they agonized to plant their feet 
on that sunlit height. They have left the 
first principles of the doctrine of Christ, and 
have gone on to perfection. 

They have accompanied St. Paul in his 
wonderful prayer in the third chapter of Ephe- 
sians, " till they know the love of Christ which 
passeth knowledge/' and are " filled with 
all the fullness of God." Says Mr. Wesley, 
whose greatness the Christian world is just 
beginning to appreciate, " From long experi- 
ence and observation I am inclined to think 
that whoever finds redemption in the blood 
of Jesus — whoever is justified — has the choice 
of walking in the higher or the lower path. I 
believe the Holy Spirit at that time sets before 
him the ' more excellent way/ and incites him 
to walk therein — to choose the narrowest path 
in the narrow way — to aspire after the heights 
and depths of holiness — after the entire image 
of God. But if he do not accept this offer 
he insensibly declines into the lower order of 
Christians; he still goes on in what may be 
called a good way, serving God in his degree, 
and finds mercy in the close of life through 



An Address to the Young Convert. 355 

the blood of the covenant. " This is on the 
condition that he is a persevering believer. 
But this lower path lies so near to the broad 
way, that many are almost insensibly lured 
into it, and go down to destruction with the 
thoughtless throng who enter in at the wide 
gate. Would you, young Christian friend, 
place the best possible safeguard against such 
a spiritual catastrophe? Take the higher 
path ; consecrate all to Christ ; seek full salva- 
tion through his blood, which cleanseth from 
all sin. This is the divinely-invented safe- 
guard of the Christian life. 

" Jesus, thine all- victorious love 

Shed in my heart abroad ; 
Then shall my feet no longer rove, 
Rooted and fixed in God." 

These two paths lie before your feet, young 
convert. Choose you that one in which you 
will walk — the higher or the lower, the safer 
or the more perilous. Let one who has tried 
both give you the benefit of his experience : — 

The lower path seems easier, but in reality 
it is far more difficult. The sultry heat pro- 
duces languor, and the noxious vapors induce 
stupor, making it exceedingly difficult to keep 



356 Love Enthroned. 

walking, even though the road is compara- 
tively level. The beautiful bowers of ease 
tempt the drowsy traveler to lie down and 
sleep. To sleep is to lose heaven, as, alas ! mul- 
titudes of the lower-path travelers have done. 
Let their whitened bones, scattered along 
this path, be a warning to you to seek the up- 
ward path. It appears to be steep and rough ; 
but the few who have tried agree in testifying 
that the atmosphere is so bracing and ex- 
hilarating that they seem to be lifted up the 
mountain by an invisible hand. Such a flood 
of life courses through their veins, such electric 
vigor shoots through their limbs, that they are 
not inclined to turn aside to the pleasure-ar- 
bors which Satan has unwisely located here 
and there near this way. The way itself is 
the highest pleasure on earth. The pilgrims 
run and are not weary. The Hebrew psalm- 
ist explains this paradox: "I will run the way 
of thy commandments when thou hast en- 
larged my heart." Along the higher path the 
joy of the Holy Ghost pours, a river deep and 
wide ; while along the lower it is a brooklet, 
more than half the year dried up by the torrid 
sun, Through the clear Italian atmosphere 



An Address to the Young Convert. 357 

of the higher path, the celestial city is ever in 
view to the eye of faith ; but clouds frequently 
settle down upon the pilgrims in the lower path, 
bringing perplexing doubts respecting the issue 
of their journey. The upward way leads to 
" an abundant entrance/* while the pilgrims 
in the other road are haunted by distressing 
fears lest they shall come short of being even 
" scarcely saved/' 

Christian reader, a fellow-pilgrim to the New 
Jerusalem has had this experience in these paths. 
His testimony could be affirmed by many thou- 
sands, the brightest names that shine on the 
pages of Church history. Have such names as 
St. Paul, Madame Guyon, Fletcher, Bramwell, 
James Brainerd Taylor, no weight with you in 
deciding the question of which path ? 

Having chosen the higher path, do not be 
discouraged by the obstacles in the way of your 
entering and walking therein. You are not to 
remove them by your own strength. You have 
an almighty and complete Saviour, " able to 
save unto the uttermost all who come unto God 
by him." With a submissive will and believing 
soul, " pray that you may know the exceeding 
greatness of his power to us-ward who believe." 



358 Love Enthroned. 

Pray, and faint not. Take into your closet 
Charles Wesley's great dramatic lyric of a 
struggling and victorious soul, " Wrestling 
Jacob," and pray its words till the intensity of 
the expressions kindle your soul with earnest- 
ness and unconquerable persistence. Let your 
faith grasp some one of Christ's many precious 
promises, and use it as a key. Then will the 
iron gate across the king's highway swing back 
upon its hinges, and the path never trod by 
the lion's whelps shall lie before you. 

Dropping all figurative language, let me say 
to you plainly, that you may enter upon the 
higher Christian life by simple faith in Jesus 
Christ as your complete Saviour. As you 
have received Jesus, so walk in him. You re- 
ceived him at the first by faith ; you are to 
receive by faith " the measure of the stature 
of the fullness of Christ." Repentance was 
the indispensable condition of justifying faith; 
you could not believe without giving up your 
sins. Consecration is the necessary qualifica- 
tion for sanctifying faith ; you cannot believe 
till you give up self. 

But you may say, " I did this when I was 
converted." You then, like a conquered rebel, 



An Address to the Young Convert. 359 

threw down your weapons and surrendered 
yourself as a prisoner of war. Now that you 
have been pardoned and made a citizen, Christ 
gives you the privilege of showing your loyalty 
to his government by pouring all your sub- 
stance into his treasury as a freewill offering, 
and of volunteering soul and body in his con- 
quering army. The difference between the 
two acts of consecration is the difference be- 
tween surrendering with reluctance and volun- 
teering with gladness. The subsequent service 
is marked by more or less servility in the one 
case and joyous freedom in the other. The 
one is a servant, the other is a son. It is true 
that all who are born into the divine family 
are sons by adoption ; but many forget their 
sonship, and begin to work for wages. They 
become legal in spirit, trusting to the merit of 
their works, and thus put a yoke upon their 
necks. But the full measure of Christ's love, 
shed abroad by the Holy Spirit, makes free 
indeed. Service is no longer a drudgery, but 
a delight. The motive to obedience is no 
longer fear, but love — not the dread of the 
law, but affection toward the Lawgiver. 

Let me illustrate the difference between 



360 Love Enthroned. 

law-service and love-service by the conscript 
and the volunteer soldier. The impulse which 
thrusts the former into the field is fear of the 
law reinforcing his feeble patriotism. When 
the news comes that his name has been drawn 
out from the wheel of fortune, and that the 
strong arm of the law has seized him to push 
him into the front of the battle, his cheeks 
turn pale and his heart sinks within him. 
Nevertheless, he puts on the military uniform, 
and shoulders his knapsack, though it seems 
to weigh a ton. Reluctantly he leaves the old 
homestead, and wearily journeys to the con- 
script camp, strongly tempted to slip away 
from the officer and escape from the country; 
but the fear of the law, and his weak love for 
his native land, overcome this temptation. 
He murmurs at the hardness of his rations, 
discomforts of the camp, the severity of the 
discipline. Yet he bravely does his duty. 
The law, like a bayonet behind him, drives 
him into the battle, where he fights like a hero. 
Yet he does not enjoy the privations and 
perils of the service. He cannot overcome its 
irksomeness. Every hour he wishes that he 
could avoid the disagreeable duties of a sol- 



An Address to the Young Convert. 361 

dier's life. He sees the volunteer enduring 
the weary marches with patriot songs, and 
with cheerful smiles rushing into battle as to 
a banquet. He sees him brought back mor- 
tally wounded, borne on a stretcher, blessing 
the old flag of his regiment as it fades away 
from his glassy eye, and thanking God for a 
country worth bleeding and dying for. The 
conscript notes with shame the contrast be- 
tween the spirit of this volunteer and his own 
cold, apathetic, reluctant service, and hides 
his blushing face from his comrades with the 
earnest, unspoken prayer for the inspiration 
of nobler feelings toward his country. Let 
us suppose that the prayer of the conscript is 
heard, and that a baptism of patriotism de- 
scends upon his soul. Now his country stands 
before him as the chief among ten thousand 
nations, and the altogether lovely. He gladly 
grasps his rifle and runs with eager delight to 
the thickest of the fight to drive back the 
rebels who are trampling beneath their feet the 
glorious old flag, the emblem of the object 
dearest to his heart, and for the honor of 
which he would gladly pour out his heart's 
blood. He has passed through a crisis in his 



362 Love Enthroned. 

military life. A new motive power has taken 
up its abode behind his will — love instead of 
fear — and it throws a halo about the hardest 
tasks, changes suffering into enjoyment, and 
transfigures death itself into an envied mar- 
tyrdom. He is a new man. The temptation 
to desert, which once cost him a struggle to 
resist, never troubles him now. His rations 
are wondrously palatable, and his knapsack 
is a softer bolster for his head as he sweetly 
slumbers between the cornhills, than the 
downy pillow awaiting his return in his dis- 
tant home. He has found out the secret 
that love knows no burdens, feels no hard- 
ships, in the service of its object. If the term 
for which he is drafted should expire to-day, 
instead of throwing up his cap for joy he 
would find a recruiting officer and re-enlist for 
the whole war, bounty or no bounty, for he 
means to fight till the last rebel lays down his 
arms, and the land of his fathers is redeemed. 
Now, my young friend, do you see the point 
of this illustration ? There are multitudes of 
conscript Christians pressed into Christ's army 
by the constraint of the law. They render 
acceptable service, and will be rewarded for 



An Address to the Young Convert. 363 

their fidelity, as the grateful country gives 
pensions alike to the drafted and volunteer 
soldier, and indiscriminately decorates their 
graves. But the volunteer enjoyed his serv- 
ice, finding the battle-field a delight because 
it afforded him an opportunity to suffer for 
his loved country, while the conscript, just as 
faithful in the outward act of obedience, never 
tasted joy in his irksome toils and sacrifices. 
Which kind of a Christian do you choose to 
be? You may serve all your life under the 
constraint of law, or you may serve with glad- 
ness in the way of God's commandments un- 
der the mighty impulse of love, perfect love, 
which casteth out all servile, tormenting fear. 
These are the two ways of Christian living 
— the lower and the higher path. Every con- 
sideration of greater usefulness, greater hap- 
piness, greater security, and, above all, greater 
glory to the blessed Lord Jesus, should con- 
strain you to seek the higher path. 

" If our love were more simple, 
We would take him at his word ; 

And our lives would be all sunshine, 
In the sweetness of the Lord." 



364 Love Enthroned. 



CHAPTER XXL 

ADDRESS TO SEEKERS OF FULL SALVATION, 

WE would now address those who are 
sincerely and earnestly seeking perfect 
love, but who fail to understand the exhorta- 
tion to a full surrender to Christ, and to have 
no will of their own. We are so created that 
we must regard our own welfare. Self-love is 
implanted in our natures. If it could be de- 
stroyed, there would be nothing to which God 
or man could appeal. Neither threatening 
nor promise would move such a soul. More- 
over, self-love has the approval of Christ in his 
epitome of the moral law. He makes it the 
measure of our love to our neighbor. " Love 
thy neighbor as thyself." But selfishness dif- 
fers from self-love in this, that self is exalted 
into the supreme law of action. The well- 
being of others and the will of God are not 
regarded. This is the self that is to be 
crucified. Says St, Paul, " I am crucified 
with Christ ; it is no longer I that live, but 



Address to Seekers of Full Salvation. 365 

Christ that liveth in me," (Gal. ii, 20, as 
punctuated by Alford.) The former ego of 
selfishness has met with a violent death, hav- 
ing been nailed to the cross, and Christ has 
taken the supreme place in the soul. The 
very fact that the death was violent implies 
that it was instantaneous — a very sharply de- 
fined transition in St. Paul's consciousness. 
There is some one last rallying point of selfish- 
ness, a last ditch, in which the evil ego trenches 
itself. It may be some very trifling thing that 
is to be exempted from the dominion of Christ 
— some preference, some indulgence, some hu- 
miliating duty, some association to be broken, 
some adornment to be discarded. " Reign, 
Jesus, over all but this," is the real language of 
that unyielding heart. This trifle, held fast, 
has been the bar which has kept thousands 
out of that harmony with the Divine will 
which precedes the fullness of the Spirit. 

But when this last intrenchment of self-will 
has been surrendered to Christ, he is not long 
in taking possession. The fullness, as well as 
the immediateness, depends on the faith of the 
soul in the Divine promise. For there is a 
difference between the subjugation of the rebel 



366 Love Enthroned. 

and his reconstruction in loyal citizenship 
between the death of sin and the fullness of 
Christian life. But the great distinctive and 
godlike feature of man is his free will. The 
memorable event, the pivotal point on which 
destiny, heaven or hell, hinges, is the hour of 
intense spiritual illumination, when sin is delib- 
erately chosen — the soul saying, " Evil, be thou 
my good " — or voluntarily rejected. Submis- 
sion to Christ is an act of faith. It could not 
be possible without confidence in his veracity 
and goodness. Hence justification and emer- 
gence into the " higher life " frequently take 
place when the only preceding act which im- 
pressed itself on the memory was not an act 
of faith but of surrender, which is grounded on 
trust as its indispensable condition. 

Some writers on advanced Christian experi- 
ence magnify the will, and say to inquirers, 
" Yield, bow, submit to the law of Christ ;" while 
the evangelist of the Wesleyan type says, " Be- 
lieve, believe Christ's every word." Both are 
right. Perfect trust cannot exist without perfect 
consecration. Nor can we make over all our in- 
terests into Christ's hands without the utmost 
confidence in his word. Hence crucifixion 



Address to Seekers of Full Salvation. 367 

with Christ implies perfect faith in him, not 
only when he is riding in triumph into Jerusa- 
lem amid the huzzas of enthusiastic men and 
the hosannas of willing children, but when the 
fickle multitude are crying, " Crucify him." 
From the beginning Jesus intimated that dis- 
cipleship must be grounded on an acceptance 
of himself, stripped of all the attractions of 
riches or honor. To know him after the flesh, 
is to know him from some selfish and worldly 
motive ; it is to fail to know him in that way 
which insures eternal life. To an enthu- 
siastic scribe who has just seen the glorious 
display of power in the healing of Peter's 
wife's mother and the casting out of demons, 
and who was taking only a romantic, rose- 
colored view of discipleship, prompting the 
thoughtless promise, " I will follow thee whith- 
ersoever thou goest," Jesus replied, "The foxes 
have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, 
but the Son of man hath not where to lay his 
head." Let him who follows me know that 
he is following a pauper fed at the tables of 
friends, and soon to be buried as a beggar at 
their expense. " If any man will be my dis- 
ciple let him deny himself, take up his crosg 



368 Love Enthroned. 

daily, and follow me." Here, over the very 
gateway of the kingdom of Christ, stands chis- 
eled the stony words, " Crucifixion of self." 
The requirement looks toward the highest 
spiritual life. The higher the degree of life 
the higher the required consecration. 

Hence, love made perfect requires as its 
antecedent that perfect surrender which, in 
the strong language of St. Paul, is crucifixion 
with Christ. The difficulty with average 
Christians is that they faint beneath the cross 
on the via dolorosa, the way of grief, and never 
reach their Calvary. They do not by faith 
gird on strength for the hour when they must 
be stretched upon the cross. They shrink 
from the torturing spike and from the spear 
aimed at the heart of their self-life. This 
betokens weakness of faith. But when the 
promise is grasped with the grip of a giant, no 
terrors, no agonies, can daunt the soul. In 
confidence that there will be, after the cruci- 
fixion, a glorious resurrection to spiritual life 
and blessedness, the believer yields his hand 
to the nail, and his head to the thorn crown. 
That flinty center of the personality, the will, 
which has up to this hour stood forth in resist- 



Address to Seekers of Full Salvation. 369 

ance to the complete will of God, suddenly 
flows down, a molten stream under the fur- 
nace blast of Divine love, melted into oneness 
with the " sweet will of God." After such a 
death there is always a resurrection unto life. 
An interval of hours, or even of days, may 
take place before the angel shall descend and 
roll away the stone from the sepulcher of the 
crucified soul, and the pulsations of a new and 
blissful life be felt through every fiber and 
atom of the being. It is not the old life that 
rises, but a new life is breathed forth by the 
Holy Ghost. The believer can then truly say 
that he is " dead indeed unto sin, but alive 
unto God through Jesus Christ. " 

" He walks in glorious liberty, 

To sin entirely dead : 
The Truth, the Son, hath made him free, 

And he is free indeed. 

1 Throughout his soul thy glories shine, 

His soul is all renewed, 
And deck'd in righteousness divine, 

And clothed and filled with God." 

He who enjoys this repose is brought so in- 
timately into sympathy with Jesus Christ that 

he is all aflame with zeal, and aroused to the 
24 



370 Love Enthroned. 

utmost activity to save lost men. As a vener- 
able preacher, widely known, quaintly ex- 
pressed it, " I enjoy that rest of faith that 
keeps me in perpetual motion" 

We come now to the practical question, 
" How may I enter into this rest, this resur- 
rection with Christ, this Divine freedom ?" If 
you ask this question in sincerity, it evinces 
that you have the first condition requisite for 
its attainment — a sense of spiritual bondage. 
Till you realize the indwelling of sin — the great 
spiritual despot — you will make no efforts to 
secure the intervention of the great Emanci- 
pator. The second requisite is, that you be- 
lieve that he is "mighty to save;" that "he 
is able to save to the uttermost all that come 
unto God by him." So long as you doubt 
that Jesus is a complete Saviour, you will be 
reluctant to yield yourself to him. You must 
believe that " the blood of Christ cleanseth 
from all unrighteousness," before the Holy 
Spirit will apply the blood of sprinkling to 
your heart. We are not bound to explain the 
necessity of this faith. It seems to be the 
only doorway through which God enters into 
the soul to set up his kingdom. Every spirit- 



Address to Seekers of Full Salvation. 371 

ual blessing enters the soul by the same ave- 
nue. It cannot enter through the senses, 
which apprehend only the material world. It 
cannot be grasped by the reasoning faculty, 
which apprehends only relations. It is not an 
object of the natural intuitions ; it is the ob- 
ject of the spiritual intuitions, or the faith facul- 
ty. The grounds of this faith are the Divine 
promises ; its object the Lord Jesus Christ. 

But this faith itself has its subjective con- 
ditions. The chief of these is the complete 
surrender of self, the entire submission of the 
will to the law of Christ — the law of love — 
and the entire consecration of all to him. 
The sinner's submission at his conversion 
is different from the believer's surrender be- 
fore entire sanctification. The one seeks 
only pardon, the other the glory of his king 
— King Jesus. Hence the great transforma- 
tion called entire sanctification, or the shed- 
ding abroad of perfect love, is possible only 
to one who completely identifies himself with 
Christ, discarding all separate purposes and 
selfish ends. The coming of the abiding Com- 
forter into the consciousness of the believer is 
promised only to those who ask in the name 



372 Love Enthroned. 

of Jesus. This signifies not only by the au- 
thority and through the merit of Jesus, but for 
the promotion of his glory. Many seekers after 
this great treasure of " rest in Jesus," or " the 
higher life," or u perfect love," or " complete 
holiness," fail at this point. Selfishness or 
the desire for happiness, instead of a desire to 
add luster to Jesus' crown of glory, is the 
vitiating element which renders their faith of 
no avail. Self-love, the measure of our re- 
quired love to our neighbor, is lawful and 
right. But selfishness, which has interests dis- 
tinct from the honor of Christ and the ad- 
vancement of his kingdom, never elevates but 
always degrades the soul. As genuine heroism 
always regards some object beyond self — for 
which to sacrifice and devote itself to destruc- 
tion, if need be, so true faith goes beyond self, 
and apprehends Jesus Christ's glory as its 
object of desire. It is at this point that the 
seeker of purity of heart finds his severest 
tests. It has been said that it is a long road 
to the end of self. But the illumination of the 
Holy Spirit will, in a very short time, show to 
the sincere and importunate soul the end of 
that long road. He can carry a lighted candle 



Address to Seekers of Full Salvation. 373 

through our souls, and in a few moments un- 
cover the idols of which we ourselves may 
have been unconscious. He will make de- 
mand after demand, till he has exhausted self. 
A friend of the writer became sick in Paris. 
He sent for the most eminent physician in the 
city, who, after a careful diagnosis, informed 
his patient that he was attacked with a fatal 
fever then prevailing in the French capital. 
Said he to him, " You will soon lose your rea- 
son, and then sink into a state of insensi- 
bility, from which it is not certain that you 
will rally. But I will do my best to carry 
you safely through the deadly disease. Make 
your will, and deposit it with me. Put into 
my hands your trunk and its key, your watch, 
your purse, your clothes, your passport, and 
every thing else which you prize.*' The sick 
man was thunderstruck at such demands by 
an entire stranger, who might administer a 
dose of poison, and send the patients body to 
the potter's field, and appropriate the surren- 
dered treasures to his own use. A moment's 
reflection taught him that the demand was 
made out of pure benevolence, and that it 
was more safe to trust himself and his posses- 



374 Love Enthroned. 

sions to the hands of a man of high profes- 
sional repute than to run the risk of being 
plundered by a hungry horde of hotel serv- 
ants. He surrendered all his goods and him- 
self into the charge of the physician. He sat 
by his bedside, saw his prophecy fulfilled, rea- 
son go out in delirium, and intelligence sink 
into stupor. He watched the ebbing tide of 
life with all the solicitude of a brother. At 
length he saw the tide turn, and detected the 
first faint refluent wave which was to bring the 
sick man back to the shores of life. He re- 
covered, and found his purse and all his treas- 
ures restored to him. Thus must you do if 
you would avail yourself of the skill of the all- 
healing Physician, Jesus Christ. Make your 
will, and give it to him. Commit your purse 
to his keeping. A consecrated pocket-book 
always attends a sanctified heart. Without 
this attendant, the heart-work is not real and 
genuine. Put yourself, your possessions, your 
reputation, your future, into Christ's hands by 
an act of consecration, and then BELIEVE that 
he will do his work without any assistance 
from you. You cannot improve your own 
condition. You cannot expel the dire disease 



Address to Seekers of Full Salvation. 375 

of sin from its hold upon your very vitals. 
Jesus only can free you. 

" His precious Blood both wounds and heals, 

When faith the balm applies, 
My peace restores, my pardon seals, 

My nature sanctifies. 
His precious Blood the life inspires 

Which angels live above, 
And fills my infinite desires, 

And turns me all to love." 

My first word of advice to you who are indif- 
ferent to the subject, yet are willing to be con- 
vinced and incited to seek perfect love, is to 
gain a clear intellectual view of your spiritual 
need, and of your wealth of privilege in Christ 
Jesus, whom you have already claimed as your 
pardoning Saviour. Understand that he came, 
not only that you might have spiritual life, but 
that you might have it more abundantly. When 
you sought forgiveness you looked away to Cal- 
vary, and saw by faith Jesus crucified ; now 
that you are seeking the fullness of the Spirit, 
lift your eyes above the summit of Calvary, 
even to Jesus glorified on the mediatorial 
throne. The glorification of the Son of God 
opens a new dispensation in the unfolding of 
the Gospel. Previous to that great event in 



376 Love Enthroned. 

the heavenly world, Jesus had power on earth 
to forgive sins ; but since he has mounted to 
his Fathers throne, and by his hand has been 
crowned with the royal diadem, it has pleased 
him to give proof of his continued interest in 
all believers by sending down the fullness of the 
Holy Ghost. To this Jesus distinctly referred 
when he stood among the jubilant priests 
sounding their trumpets in the last great day 
of the feast of tabernacles, and made this 
wonderful promise : " He that believeth on 
me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his in- 
most self shall flow rivers ,, — not brooklets, van- 
ishing in the drought — " of living water." That 
Jesus was speaking of some future dispensation 
of blessings to believers, St. John, guided by 
Divine inspiration, distinctly declares : " But 
this spake he of the Spirit, which they that be- 
lieve on him should receive : for the Holy 
Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus 
was not yet glorified." In the gift of the Holy 
Ghost the Gospel dispensation culminated. 
John the Baptist, when Jesus came to be bap- 
tized, saw this privilege of believers towering 
above all other blessings, an event in the future 
history of the Son of man eclipsing all other 



Address to Seekers of Full Salvation. 377 

events, the end and aim of his incarnation, 
atoning death, glorious resurrection, and tri- 
umphant ascension, that he might mend the 
severed link between God and man by the fus- 
ing, unifying power of the Holy Spirit. " After 
me comes one who shall baptize you with the 
Holy Ghost and with fire." The Comforter 
came on the day of pentecost — came to stay. 
His work is not an indefinite and general 
operation, but an individual transformation. 

2. Though you live in the dispensation of the 
Spirit, the benefits of his presence are to be 
appropriated to you by faith. You say that 
you have always been told to believe, and that 
you find it difficult. I will not blame you. 
Sometimes faith preached to young Christians 
with no exemplification or simplifying of the 
act, is as inappropriate as to set a bushel of 
wheat before a half-starved sucking babe with 
the invitation to eat. You cannot believe with- 
out an object of faith. He stands forth before 
you in the Gospels, Jesus the Son of God. You 
cannot believe without grounds or evidences. 
They are found in the Gospels, in the miracles 
and sinless character of Jesus Christ, and in 
the effects of his Gospel in human hearts and 



378 Love Enthroned. 

lives, and in its beneficent influence on the na- 
tions which have received its blessed light. 

The evidences of Christianity are the gift of 
God to you. In this sense, faith is the gift 
of God. But to receive their convincing effect 
you must study them with a candid mind, 
willing to follow wherever the truth leads. If 
you would have faith in Christ, become famil- 
iar with his character and his teachings. It may 
be that we have four gospels in order that 
the Son of God, in the perfection of his man- 
hood and the splendor of his Godhead, may 
pass four times before your eyes. As he who 
would be a perfect orator or poet is exhorted 
by Horace "to handle the Grecian models 
with a daily and a nightly hand," so must the 
believer who aspires to be a perfect Christian 
sit before the great Exemplar by day and by 
night. An enduring faith is largely grounded 
in the intellectual grasp of the truth. There 
is a sense in which we must know in order to 
believe. A man's character must be favorably 
known to the banker before he will intrust him 
with his money. The more we know of Jesus 
by the study of his fourfold biography, the 
deeper and broader the foundation for our 



Address to Seekers of Full Salvation. 379 

faith in his promises. It also greatly assists 
our faith to know what marvelous effects have 
followed it in the history of the Church, espe- 
cially in the opening chapter — the Acts of the 
Apostles. Trace again and again the triumph- 
ant march of our holy faith from Jerusalem, 
conquering the inveterate prejudices of Jew 
and Gentile, as narrated by St. Luke in the 
Acts. You will find that faith is contagious. 
Association with some capacious soul who em- 
braces the amplitude of the promises, and holds 
fast to them with an unrelaxing grasp, helps 
the feeble sinews of spiritual infancy to grow 
strong. St. Paul is such a soul. He is a spir- 
itual giant. He is accessible to you all. His 
enthusiastic ardor, his invincible faith, which 
neither stripes nor prisons, plotting Jews nor 
riotous Gentiles, could shake, will be a tonic to 
your spiritual weakness. Lock arms with him 
and walk through his epistles till you catch 
his gait and measure up to his Titanic strides, 
as he boldly approaches the throne of grace in 
the name of the ever living High Priest. " What 
part of the Bible do you read the most?" said 
a Scotch minister to an old woman of remark- 
able faith in God. "The glorious epistles/' 



380 Love Enthroned. 

was the quick reply. On this strong meat all 
the giants of the Church have fed. You will 
find St. Paul's later epistles especially adapted 
to enlarge your view of your privilege under 
the dispensation of the Spirit. It is very evi- 
dent that the great apostle grew in grace 
mightily between the day when the scales fell 
from his eyes in Damascus and the day when 
he penned the epistle to the Ephesians. But 
do not rest satisfied with an intimate acquaint- 
ance with the Scriptures. 

3. While making this acquaintance with the 
grounds of faith, endeavor to appropriate to 
yourself every promise of spiritual grace. St. 
Paul made the promises and atoning blood of 
Christ his own private property. Here was 
the secret of his herculean strength of faith. 
" The life which I now live in the flesh I live 
by the faith of (in) the Son of God, who loved 
tne, and gave himself for trie" He did not ex- 
clude others, but he was sure to include him- 
self, and to insist, not on a fraction of Christ, 
but a whole Christ, to be as completely ap- 
propriated to himself as if he were the solitary 
son of Adam for whom atonement had been 
made. Rutherford, whose name is precious 



Address to Seekers of Full Salvation. 381 

to all devout Scotchmen as ointment poured 
out, and whose letters are indeed a garden of 
spices for the walks of believers, had evident- 
ly learned this secret of appropriating faith. 
He often, with special earnestness, besought 
the Father to distribute " the great loaf, 
Christ," to himself and to his flock. Let me 
advise you to practice writing out the prom- 
ises of the Lord Jesus, especially the promise 
of the abiding Comforter, which Jesus styles 
the promise of the Father, and to insert your 
own name in the place of the whosoever, or 
any man, or other general term. This treat- 
ment of the promises seems to be the best an- 
tidote for that general and indefinite faith 
which accredits them as true for the mass but 
not for the individual. In this way most of 
the promises are thrown away by believers, as 
the threatenings are thrown away by unbe- 
lievers. But when we write our own name in 
them, and bring them to the throne of grace, 
we are impressed as never before with the 
thought that the promise must be fulfilled to 
me personally or it is a failure. You will be 
astonished to discover how much your spirit- 
ual aspirations will be quickened, and your suit 



382 Love Enthroned. 

at the mercy-seat intensified, by so simple a 
device as this. Thus I have given you advice 
concerning faith such as the great commenta- 
tor Bengel gives for searching the Scriptures . 
" Apply thyself wholly to the text : apply the 
subject wholly to thyself." 

After you have fixed your faith on some 
promise of full salvation, you are to believe 
that the fullness is for you. You must believe 
that God is able to give it to you, and that he 
is willing to fulfill his word now, for to-day is 
the day of salvation. " Then," says Mr. Wes- 
ley, " God will enable you to believe that he 
doth it." But you say, " I don't realize any 
change," Do you not see that you are looking 
for some token that God is true ? You must 
trust his naked word. The nobleman was told 
by Jesus, " Go thy way, thy son liveth." He 
did not ask for some sign that the promise was 
true ; but he believed the word of Christ, and 
acted on that faith. To wait till you feel the 
change before you believe, is to walk by feel- 
ing and not by faith. It is to put the conse- 
quent before the antecedent, the effect before 
the cause. You are not commanded to feel, 
but to trust. To feel the change is to know it 



Address to Seekers of Full Salvation. 383 

To wait for knowledge is to walk by sight. In 
an important sense knowledge originates in 
faith. We cannot know that we are the sons 
of God till we have trusted the promises up to 
the moment when the Spirit of adoption cries 
in our hearts, " Abba, Father.'* After that 
hour our sonship is a matter of knowledge. 

If I have not attained perfect love, the 
promise of the Abiding Comforter, who shall 
be the Sanctifier, and glorify Christ to my con- 
sciousness as mine, wholly mine, is a subject of 
faith. It is our duty to insist on the truth of 
Christ, and to say that he does now keep his 
word. When it pleases him to reveal Christ 
to you as your complete Saviour, your faith 
on this point will be lost in sight, and your 
faith will reach up and claim some higher 
blessing yet unattained. On this Jacob's lad- 
der you will climb up to heaven. This faith, 
which insists that God doeth the work now, 
must proceed upon the assumption that you 
cannot make yourself better by waiting. If 
perfect love is by faith, it must be now, just 
as I am. These three must always go together 
— faith, now, and just as I am. There are 
also three other things which constitute the 



384 Love Enthroned. 

creed of the legalist — works, some future time, 
when I have made myself better. 

But you ask the question, Is every believer 
prepared to believe for entire sanctification 
and the fullness of God ? No. If he has no 
earnest, insatiable desire for it he cannot be- 
lieve. Nor can he till he has made an entire 
surrender of himself deliberately, and forever, 
to Christ. He must be willing that he should 
subvert all his life plans, and enter into all his 
present being and future history. In other 
words, entire consecration is as necessary to 
sanctifying, as repentance is to justifying, faith. 
While you are consecrating yourself, various 
tests will be presented to your mind. Some 
of these will be suggested by the Holy Spirit. 
You must abide them. Others may be sug- 
gested by Satan to defeat your purpose. He 
may thrust some strange or unreasonable and 
absurd duty forward as a test. How am I to 
treat these suggestions of the adversary when 
unable to discriminate them from the sugges- 
tions of the Holy Ghost ? You should declare 
your willingness to do all the will of God as 
it shall be made manifest by the word, the 
Spirit, providence, and reason conspiring. The 



Address to Seekers of Full Salvation. 385 

suggestions of Satan will disappear when our 
willingness to obey God fully appears. 

The suggested tests of the Holy Spirit will 
continue to press themselves upon our atten- 
tion, and demand our compliance after God 
has given us conscious acceptance. Rev. A. B. 
Earle was deeply impressed, when seeking the 
witness of adoption, that he ought to go on a 
mission to Africa. He struggled against it for 
some time, and at last said, " I will do God's 
will in Africa or in any other country on 
earth." Since that moment the call to Africa 
has ceased. There was no providential open- 
ing, but a wide field for evangelism in Amer- 
ica, for which thousands of redeemed souls will 
thank God through eternity. It is evident that 
Satan was pressing this deadly mission upon 
him to drive him from his purpose of full con- 
secration. It is always safe to say in such 
cases, " O Lord, I will do thy will as inter- 
preted by thy word and thy providence.' ' We 
have now pointed out a stone against which 
thousands have stumbled in their approach to 
the blessing of the fullness of the Spirit, and 
we have endeavored to show you how you may 

avoid it. 
25 



386 Love Enthroned. 

4. In urging your suit, rest wholly on the 
name of your indorser, Jesus Christ. In his 
address (John xiv-xvi) in which the pearl of 
perfect love is again and again promised in the 
coming of the abiding Comforter, Jesus inserts 
in every promise the condition, " in my name." 
This means that we are to identify our plea 
with the glory of Christ. We cannot fail when 
we pray for the same blessing for which he in- 
tercedes in our behalf. We are sure that self- 
ishness does not underlie our petition when 
our aim is the glory of Christ only. When we 
thus use the name of our High Priest, we 
clothe ourselves with his merit. The name of 
Jesus is like the signet ring of an absent mon- 
arch, purposely left behind to authenticate the 
acts of his ministers. It transfers his power to 
them. So has Jesus transferred to our hands 
the key that unlocks the treasury of heaven, 
and secures the outpouring of the anointing 
that teacheth and abideth. " The greatest gift 
that men can wish or heaven can send/' 

5. Do not fail, when urging your plea, to re- 
member that you have rights with God the 
Father in Jesus' name. You could not claim 
his mediatorial work and merit. But since 



Address to Seekers of Full Salvation. 387 

this work has been done, you may now stand 
on the high platform of rights with God, and 
claim in Jesus name all that he has purchased 
for you. He has invested you not only with 
a right to the tree of life, but to all that pre- 
pares you to pluck and eat its fruit. Again, 
" if we confess our sins, He is faithful and 
just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us 
from all unrighteousness/' The word " just " 
is a jural term, implying rights on the part of 
the believer and obligation on the part of God ; 
the obligation not only of veracity, expressed 
by the word faithful, but also the obligation 
of justice. He will not wrong us by withhold- 
ing the greatest blessing purchased by his Son, 
and sacredly kept by the Father till the hour 
we come in that influential name and claim 
our heritage. 



Bold I approach the eternal throne, 

And claim the crown through Christ my own.' 



6, Faint not. Jesus, in his parables of the 
unjust judge and of the man awakened by his 
friend at midnight, and in his interview with 
the Syrophenician woman, emphasizes inten- 
sity of spirit, importunity, and perseverance in 



j 388 Love Enthroned. 

prayer. Especially is the unspeakable gift of 
the fullness of God to be obtained by persist- 
ent and prevailing prayer. Take with you 
into your closet Charles Wesley's wonderful 
portrayal of a struggling and victorious soul, 
" Wrestling Jacob," and make its intense ex- 
pressions the vehicle of your earnestness — its 
bold demands, its unshaken purpose, its high 
resolve, the spirit of your plea — and you must 
sooner or later prevail. God yields to a thor- 
oughly determined soul ! The violent take 
the kingdom of heaven by force. You will 
find that this earnestness cannot be aroused 
except upon the plea which says, " Now, Lord, 
just as I am, fill me with thy perfect love." 
If you drop the "now" and say at some time, 
you will find the sinews of your effort para- 
lyzed, and your vehement desire cooled down 
to indifference. 

7. Be patient. " I waited patiently for the 
Lord, and he inclined unto me, and heard my 
cry." The Psalmist proved the truth of the 
adage that the patient waiter is no loser. " For 
ye have need of patience, that, after ye have 
done the will of God, ye might receive the 
promise," that is, the thing promised. From 



Address to Seekers of Full Salvation. 389 

lack of " the patience of hope," thousands have 
failed to grasp the prize of " love divine, all 
love excelling," made perfect in the hearts, as 
a distinct and glorious work of the Sanctifier. 
You cannot fail if you persevere. The strug- 
gle may be only an hour ; it may be a month 
or a year. Some, after wandering as long as 
the children of Israel in 

" Sorrows and sins, and doubts and fears, 
A howling wilderness," 

have emerged at last into this land of promise. 
Such invariably see that they might long, long 
before have had their portions assigned to 
them on the mountain of God by their great 
Joshua, if they had obediently trusted him. 

You will meet with the advice to cease all 
effort, and to subside into quietude and still- 
ness ; to do nothing yourself, but let Christ do 
all for you. It is true that you can do nothing 
meritorious to improve your condition. It is 
also true that you must work the work of God, 
that is, which he requires. " And this is the 
work of God, that ye believe on Him whom 
he hath sent." This may require high and 
strenuous effort to keep yourself on the divine 



390 Love Enthroned. 

altar, to keep down doubt, and to hold un« 
waveringly to the word of God. The kind of 
stillness which Wesley recommended, you will 
be safe in practicing — 



i< 



Restless, resigned, for God I wait ; 

For God my vehement soul stands still." 



The faith that brings us into the " valley of 
blessing so sweet," comes out of a furnace of 
desire, glowing with sevenfold ardor. It is 
not in harmony with the nature of the human 
sensibilities that this intensity of desire should 
be awakened and sustained in a state of pas- 
sivity. Endeavor intensifies desire. 

I cannot leave this subject without pointing 
out another rock over which many stumble in 
seeking both justification and perfect love. I 
refer to what, for lack of a better name, I call 
tentative faith — believing just by way of exper- 
iment. There is unbelief at the bottom of any 
such acts of the mind. Christ does not receive 
people who surrender to him just by way of 
trial, to see what blessings he will bestow, 
what rapturous joys he will inspire. There is 
no complete surrender possible with this men- 
tal reservation, the purpose to take back your 



Address to Professors. 391 

consecration if the results are not satisfactory, 
As true marriage must consist in a union of 
hearts for life, in order to the enjoyment of the 
Highest bliss of that sacred institution, so must 
the marriage of the soul to Christ be an ever- 
lasting union, the farthest possible remove from 
the caprices and criminally reserved rights 
of free love, coquetting with Christ to-day and 
the world to-morrow. Ye who fully purpose 
an eternal wedlock with Christ for better or 
for worse, approach the glorious Bridegroom 
in the utmost confidence that he will array you 
in a robe of clean linen, and present you unto 
himself as his faultless bride with exceeding 
joy — joy in his own bosom, joy thrilling your 
spirit, and gladdening all the angels who wit- 
ness the nuptials. 

" He comes ! He comes ! The kingly Christ 

From heaven's eternal shores ; 
His uncreated freshness fills 

His bride as she adores*" 



392 Love Enthroned. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

ADDRESS TO PROFESSORS. 

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made 

us free. — St. Paul. 

IT has been said, " Eternal vigilance is the 
price of liberty." This maxim may not 
in form be as old as St. Paul's Epistle to the 
Galatians, but it certainly is in substance. 
For he says, " Stand fast therefore in the 
liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free." 
There is no state of Christian experience in 
which we may live in ease and carelessness 
regardless of spiritual foes. It is true that we 
have the promise that Jesus will keep us. But 
this promise involves the condition that we 
keep ourselves on the territory prescribed for 
our residence, that is, the land of obedience. 
If we willfully and needlessly go upon the 
enchanted ground of temptation, presuming 
that the Lord will deliver us, we shall find 
ourselves sadly mistaken. We are to keep 
ourselves in the love of God. This is true of 



Address to Professors. 393 

that perfect love which casts out all fear that 
has torment. But how may I do this? In 
what direction are my activities to be put 
forth ? An erroneous answer to this question 
has led many to their spiritual downfall. They 
have made war directly upon their enemies, 
and while antagonizing them they have turned 
their eyes from Jesus, the source of all spirit- 
ual power. This was the mistake of Peter on 
the waters of the sea. As soon as he began 
to look at the waves he forgot the omnipo- 
tent power residing in the arm of Jesus, and 
dropped down from a faith in the supernat- 
ural to a natural view of things. " O, these 
waves will engulf me ! " thought he, and, sure 
enough, the surface, which had been as mar- 
ble, at that moment gave way beneath his 
feet, and he was up to his loins in the sea. It 
was not till in utter self-despair that he turned 
to the Master again, and felt his delivering 
hand laid upon him. We are kept by the 
power of God through faith. Faith is the 
human part of our keeping. All power is in 
our living Saviour above. Faith is the act 
which links our feebleness to his omnipotence, 
Scientists talk of the conservation and corre- 



394 Love Enthroned, 

lation of forces in physical phenomena. They 
mean by these hard words to teach that there 
is a fixed amount of physical force in the uni- 
verse, and that when it disappears in one form 
it re-appears in another; heat changing to 
electricity, etc. 

Whether this theory is true or not, there is 
conservation and correlation of spiritual power. 
Faith is the point of contact between that 
battery and human souls. Whatever be the 
form of our religious activity, it is faith that is 
at the bottom, whether it be prayer, praise, 
watchfulness, resistance to sin, or efforts for 
the salvation of others. When St. Paul has 
enumerated the weapons which constitute the 
Christian's offensive and defensive armor, he 
adds, " above" (or over) " all," as a protection 
to every other part of the armor itself, " take 
the shield of faith" — continually exercise a 
strong and lively faith. The ancient shield 
covered the whole soldier. Hence the motto 
for all Christians, whatever their attainments, 
is, " Looking unto Jesus." If your old enemy is 
the alcoholic or the narcotic appetite, you are 
not to be thinkiug all the time of the decanter 
and segar, and bracing yourself against them in 



Address to Professors. 395 

your own strength — the method of occasional 
human victory, but more frequently of human 
defeat ; but you are to look unto Jesus, to 
magnify his power, to dwell upon the promises, 
and to supplicate his great gift of the Com- 
forter, to abide within, and to be the keeping 
power. The former method of overcoming sin 
is, in the words of President Finney, " the re- 
ligion of resolution ;" the latter is "the religion 
of faith. " As long as faith in Christ is in exer- 
cise, the soul is impregnable ; it dwells in " the 
munition of rocks.' ' Then " none shall be able 
to pluck them out of my Father's hand." 
True vigilance, therefore, the price of spiritual 
liberty, is faith in Christ modified by the ap- 
prehension of spiritual peril — it is looking 
unto Jesus on the battle-field. The beautiful 
vignette of a cross grasped by a hand, with the 
motto underneath, Teneo et teneor — I hold 
fast and am held fast — expresses the same 
thought. There is no other way of maintain- 
ing the higher life. It is rest in Jesus. It is 
the rest of faith. They who thus rest are not 
exempted from temptation and warfare, but 
they are lifted by the power of the Holy Spirit 
into such a nearness to Jesus that they find 



396 Love Enthroned. 

trust in him a natural and a delightful exercise 
and victory over sin easy. 

The spiritual life, which was formerly much 
like a foreigner sojourning in the heart, has at 
length become a naturalized citizen, and means 
to stay forever. Formerly faith was a painful 
effort and spasmodic ; now it is spontaneous, 
delightful, and continuous, so long as the 
grounds of faith, the Divine promises, are kept 
in view by the constant study of the Holy 
Scriptures. 

The higher life has deeper roots than the 
ordinary Christian life. It is rooted in the 
soil of the divine word, and, like the century 
enduring oak, appropriates therefrom all its 
elements of strength. " Man shall not live by 
bread alone, but by every word that proceed- 
eth out of the mouth of God." He who 
wishes to dwell on this high spiritual plane 
above the clouds, which intercept the sunlight 
to the dwellers below, must consent to be a 
man of one book, and to endure the reproach 
of being a man of one idea — Christ crucified. 
He will awake in the morning more hungry 
for his soul-food than for his breakfast. He 
will prefer the word of God to the morning 



Address to Professors. 397 

paper, if he has time but for one ; and, if com- 
pelled to go forth without his daily spiritual 
rations, he will be conscious of faintness and 
weakness. Well persons always feel the loss 
of their regular meals ; the sick never, because 
they have no appetite intensely consuming 
their strength. 

Let it be understood that the state of full 
trust in Christ cannot be maintained by hours 
devoted to current literature and minutes 
given to hasty glances at the Holy Scriptures. 
That is the path to spiritual emaciation, 
trodden by multitudes of weak believers, 
piteously crying, " O my leanness, my lean- 
ness ! ' There must be time taken to read, 
mark, and inwardly digest spiritual truth, that 
it may pour its vital elements into the life- 
currents of our souls. 

Many Christians are in too great a hurry to 
live the life of uninterrupted trust. The Com- 
forter came to abide, but the place was too 
confused and he withdrew. " As the servant 
was busy here and there, he was gone." 
Again, the higher life is not a life of solitude. 
Society produces great men. They are not 
reared in the hermitage. Perfect love to God 



398 Love Enthroned. 

does not turn its back upon men, and bury 
itself in a desert or cloister. It seeks human 
abodes 

" With prayers, entreaties, tears, to save, 
To pluck men from the gaping grave," 

The ordinary social means of grace are nec- 
essary to the promotion of the life of the 
most advanced Christian. Beware of under- 
valuing the gatherings of the Church, where 
young and old, the mature Christian and the 
young convert, testify of Jesus' love. Both 
the faith and the lives of many of them may 
be imperfect. For this very reason they need 
your superior light, while you need their so- 
ciety to keep you in the closest sympathy with 
your fellow-disciples, and to counteract the 
tendency to segregate into cliques, to the 
detriment of Christian unity. 

It sometimes happens that the repose of the 
soul in Christ is disturbed by another cause. 
Ecstatic joy has been erroneously assumed to 
be the only proof of the presence of the abid- 
ing Comforter; and when that rapturous ex- 
ultation subsides, the individual is apt to say, 
" I have lost the fullness of the Spirit. ,, The 
mistake is, the forgetfulness that there are 



Address to Professors. 399 

other fruits of the Spirit, which may attest his 
presence ; and, moreover, that the promise of 
God is still true, though for a brief period we 
see no evidence of his presence in our feelings. 
We are to walk by faith and not by feeling. 
Activity in behalf of the freedom of others is 
the way to preserve our own. In our recent 
war it was found that the Republic could not 
maintain its own freedom without emancipat- 
ing the slaves within its reach. It is just so 
with the preservation of that freedom indeed 
which Jesus, the Great Emancipator, proclaims. 
The person who sits down to enjoy the deli- 
cious sweets of his newly-found liberty, satis- 
fied with the ecstacies of devotion, will soon 
find his joys expiring. Joy is given as a mo- 
tive to labor. Great exultation to-day means 
great toil to-morrow. The gladness of the 
pentecost was a preparation for the conversion 
of the three thousand. " The joy of the Lord 
is your strength." It is designed as a means 
to an end. " Restore unto me the joys of thy 
salvation ; then will I teach transgressors thy 
ways, and sinners will be converted unto 
thee." If we begin to luxuriate in the means 
as itself an end, forgetful of the divine end, 



400 Love Enthroned. 

we pervert the blessing bestowed ; and the 
manna, being selfishly hoarded, instead of 
being distributed to the hungry, " breeds 



worms/ ' 



BEWARE OF FANATICISM. 

There are two enemies to the fullness of the 
Spirit — baptized worldliness, and fanaticism 
run mad on the subject of holiness. Let us 
consider the latter. Fanaticism is not limited 
to religion. Wild and extravagant views may 
be indulged on any subject. In our late war 
we had peace-fanatics, who clamored for peace 
at any price ; and war-fanatics, aching to see 
every rebel hung and his estate confiscated. 
In peace, we always have had fanatical agita- 
tors on various questions of social interest, 
such as labor, the sphere of woman, and hos- 
tility to immigration. In philosophy, we have 
fanatics intolerant of opposition, who ridicule 
as blockheads all who differ from them. Any 
person whose mind becomes so dispropor- 
tionately filled with any one idea as to become 
unsymmetrical and unbalanced, is in danger 
of those extravagant views and intense feel- 
ings which make the fanatic. As religion is 



Address to Professors. 401 

an exciting and absorbing theme, so there is 
especial danger of running into unwarrantable 
enthusiasm. Religious fanaticism has deluged 
the world with bloodshed, instituted inquisi- 
tions, and invented thumb-screws. Sanctifi- 
cation fanaticism is a milder species of this 
genus, yet it is none the less mischievous. It 
brings into reproach the most glorious doctrine 
of the Gospel — the office of the Sanctifier ; it 
brings into ridicule the crowning blessing — the 
most precious experience of our holy Chris- 
tianity. Here is the portrait of a holiness 
fanatic, or perfectionist. 

1. He abjures and pours contempt upon that 
scintillation of the eternal Logos, human rea- 
son. This lighted torch, placed in man's hand 
for his guidance in certain matters, he extin- 
guishes in order ostensibly to exalt the candle 
of the Lord, the Holy Ghost, but really to lift 
up the lamp of his own flickering fancy. Rea- 
son is a gift of God, worthy of our respect. 
We are to accept it as our surest guide in its 
appropriate sphere. Beyond this sphere we 
should seek the light of revelation and the 
guidance of the Spirit. The fanatic depre- 
ciates one perfect gift from the Father of 



26 



*^ 



402 Love Enthroned. 

light, that he may magnify another. Both 
of these lights — reason and the Holy Ghost- 
are necessary to our perfect guidance. To 
reject one is to assume a greater wisdom than 
God's. Such presumptuous folly he will glar- 
ingly expose. He who spurns the Spirit will 
be left to darkness outside the narrow sphere of 
reason ; and he who scorns reason will be left to 
follow the hallucinations of his heated imagina- 
tion, instead of the dictates of common sense. 

** 'Tis reason our great Master holds so dear ; 
'Tis reason's injured rights his wrath resents ; 
'Tis reason's voice t' obey his glorious crown ; 
To give lost reason life he poured his own. 
Believe, and show the reason of a man ; 
Believe, and taste the pleasures of a God : 
Through reason's wounds alone thy faith can die." 

Mr. Wesley was pestered by persons " who 
imagine that they receive particular directions 
from God, not only in points of importance, 
but in things of no moment, in the most tri- 
fling circumstances of life. Whereas God has 
given to us our own reason for a guide, though 
never excluding the secret assistance of his 
Spirit." 

2. The fanatic degrades the word of God by 
claiming for himself an inspiration equal to its 



Address to Professors. 403 

theopneustic utterances, just as the free-relig- 
ionist adroitly belittles the Holy Scriptures by 
classifying their inspiration with that of Homer 
and Shakspeare. He proclaims new revela- 
tions of Christian truth beyond the utterances 
of the sacred oracles, forgetting the maxim of 
orthodoxy, that any thing essentially new in 
Christianity is essentially false. He takes to 
his bosom the baneful error that Christianity, 
as a system of objective truth, was not handed 
down from above a complete whole, but was 
left by its Author to be finished by endless 
supplements, communicated to individual be- 
lievers in all ages. John Wesley was called 
to preach against this folly of " enthusiasts, 
who imagine that God dictates every word 
they speak, and that it is impossible they 
should speak any thing amiss, either as to the 
matter or manner of it." He also styles those 
enthusiasts " who designedly speak in public 
without any premeditation. " 

3. This fanatic also imagines he has a man- 
ifestation of God so immediate that he no 
longer needs the ordained means of grace. He 
is beyond the sacraments. Prayer is a super- 
fluity. He receives without asking; or, if he 



404 Love Enthroned. 

asks for any thing, he asks but once. To re- 
peat his request would imply imperfect faith. 
He omits one petition of the Lord's Prayer, 
because he has no trespasses to be forgiven; 
although the recording angel is daily noting a 
thousand sins of ignorance and infirmity which 
need the blood of sprinkling. If he is a 
logical fanatic — a very rare bird — he finds all 
his time so holy that he has no occasion to 
make the commanded distinction between 
secular and sacred days. A step further down 
this descending stairway brings him to the 
Oneida perfectionists — to equal love to all 
men and to all women. 

4. The fanatical pretender to Christian per- 
fection is characterized by acts professedly 
prompted by the Spirit, but which are contrary 
to both reason and the word of God. One 
thinks himself called by the Spirit to skip 
about or dance in a Christian meeting, and to 
make gestures which enforce no truth, because 
no words are uttered, though St. Paul insists 
that all things be done to edification. Another 
whirls on one toe as swift as a top, till she 
sinks down exhausted. Another darts like an 
arrow across the prayer-room with outstretched 



Address to Professors. 405 

hand, and lays it on the head of a brother to 
impart the Holy Ghost. Another is impelled 
to show his humility by leaving his seat in the 
church, and rolling in the dust in the broad 
aisle during the sermon. These are specimens 
of vagaries contrary to common sense and the 
Bible, which have brought spiritual Christian- 
ity under reproach, and have turned away 
formal professors from seeking the greatest 
gift that men can wish or Heaven can send — 
all the fullness of God. 

11 Such the credulous dotard's dream, 

And such his shorter road : 
Thus he makes the world blaspheme, 

And shames the Church of God ; 
Staggers thus the most sincere, 

Till from the Gospel hope they move ; 
Holiness as error fear, 

And start at perfect love. H 

5. Another feature of the character of such 
a one is superiority to instruction and reproof. 
Are they not taught of the Lord ? Shall they, 
who are receiving the blaze of the Spirit's light, 
like the full-orbed sun, turn away and follow the 
pale radiance of some brother's feebler light, 
glimmering like a faint star in the skies ? Not 
they. In vain does the wise and deeply-ex^ 



406 Love Enthroned, 

perienced Wesley expostulate with Bell and 
Maxfield, and their band of overheated zealots, 
who, by their dangerous delusions, were sadly 
damaging the fair fame of Methodism, and 
making her a laughing-stock to her many foes. 
They would not deign to listen to " poor, 
blind John/' After a long forbearance, sixty 
of these deluded members of the Foundry 
Society were cut off at once, and left to follow 
their disordered imaginations, in order to save 
the whole body from the fatal infection. Many 
of them " perished in the gainsaying of Korah." 
6. We should deserve the reputation of an 
unskillful limner should we fail to portray the 
most prominent and most ugly feature of this 
character, — his uncharitableness. Professing 
perfect love to God, he grievously lacks tender 
affection to his fellow-men. All degrees of spir- 
ituality and faith below his own are deemed by 
him worthy, not of sympathy but of censure. If 
the young convert falls into the hands of 
such a nursing father or nursing mother, he 
will have a sorry time indeed, and be more 
than once tempted to say that there is a 
mistake in the declaration that " the ways of 
wisdom are ways of pleasantness/' He is 



Address to Professors. 407 

scolded for every unsteady step ; at every fall 
he is berated, and not encouraged to try again. 
He is judged by an absolute standard, and 
condemned without mercy if he fails in any 
particular. It is not our purpose to show the 
philosophy of so strange a combination of 
contradictions as this feature of the perfec- 
tionist-fanatic presents. Similar phenomena 
occur in the commercial world. Stock-gam- 
blers, while calling millions their own, are 
penniless bankrupts. Both characters draw 
upon their imaginations, and account them- 
selves rich. They do not put gold in their 
coffers. They are satisfied with the glitter of 
appearances. Simon Magus fixed his eye 
upon the worldly glory which the extraor- 
dinary gifts of the Holy Ghost would confer, 
and was baptized, and found that he was still 
the same poor pagan sorcerer. Christians 
who seek for ecstatic joys, or showy gifts of 
the Spirit, or any thing else rather than the 
pure love of God, make the same mistake. 
Hence the importance of giving earnest heed 
to Wesley's admonition, " Let no one be satis- 
fied with the direct witness of the Spirit, with- 
out the fruits of the Spirit." 



408 Love Enthroned. 

Application :— In the words of Wesley, 
" Watch and pray lest you fall into so great 
an evil. It easily besets those who fear or 
love God. O, beware you do not think of 
yourself more highly than you ought to think ! 
Do not imagine you have attained that grace 
of God which you have not attained. You 
may have much joy ; you may have a measure 
of love, and yet not have living faith. Cry 
unto the Lord that he would not suffer you, 
blind as you are, to go out of the way ; that 
you may never fancy yourself a believer in 
Christ till Christ be revealed in you, and till 
his Spirit witness with your spirit that you are 
a child of God." 

" Beware of that daughter of pride, en- 
thusiasm, (fanaticism.) O keep at the utter- 
most distance from it ! Give no place to a 
heated imagination. Do not hastily ascribe 
things to God. Do not easily suppose dreams, 
voices, impressions, visions, or revelations to 
be from God. They may be from him. They 
may be from nature. They may be from the 
devil. Therefore 'believe not every spirit, 
but try the spirits whether they be of God.' 
Try all things by the written word, and let 



Address to Professors. 409 

all bow down before it. You are in danger of 
enthusiasm every hour if you depart ever so 
little from Scripture ; yea, or from the plain, 
literal meaning of any text, taken in connec- 
tion with the context. And so you are, if you 
despise or lightly esteem reason, knowledge, 
or human learning ; every one of which is an 
excellent gift of God, and may serve the no- 
blest purposes. I advise you never to use the 
words ' wisdom/ i reason, ' knowledge/ by way 
of reproach. On the contrary, pray that you 
yourself may abound in them more and more. 
If you mean worldly wisdom, useless knowl- 
edge, false reasoning, say so ; and throw away 
the chaff but not the wheat. One general in- 
let of enthusiasm is expecting the end without 
the means ; the expecting knowledge, for in- 
stance, without searching the Scriptures and 
consulting the children of God ; the expecting 
spiritual strength without constant prayer and 
steady watchfulness ; the expecting any bless- 
ing without hearing the word of God at every 
opportunity. Some have been ignorant of 
this device of Satan. They have left off 
searching the Scriptures. They have said, 
i God writes all the Scriptures on my heart.' 



410 Love Enthroned. 

O take warning, you who are concerned 
herein ! You have listened to the voice of a 
stranger/' 

In conclusion, this question arises. In view 
of the possibility of such an unlovely character 
coming into existence under the guise of 
entire sanctification, would it not be wise to 
abstain from inculcating this high doctrine, 
lying as it does on the borders of an infatua- 
tion so dangerous ? Just as wise as it would 
be to suppress Christianity because its abuse 
has bred fanatics, bigots, and persecutors. 
Just as wise as it would be to withdraw all gold 
and silver coin from our currency because of 
worthless imitations. Yet this is the way the 
many are treating entire sanctification. A su- 
perior practical wisdom did the great founder 
of Methodism evince when, notwithstanding 
the outburst of religious madness and folly 
which at one time beslimed his London So- 
cieties, he insisted on preaching this truth, and 
enjoined on all his preachers to set forth "per- 
fection to believers constantly, strongly, and 
explicitly," and exhorted them " to mind this 
one thing, and continually agonize for it." 
His brother Charles, constitutionally much 



Address to Professors. 41 J 

conservative, thus expressed his sympathy 
with this doctrine in this fiery ordeal : — 

" Set the false witnesses aside, 
But hold the truth forever fast/* 

Many years after the great work of sanctifi- 
cation which was wrought so powerfully in the 
Wesleyan Societies, beginning in Otley about 
1760, and spreading rapidly through the con- 
nection, and in some places running into ex- 
travagances requiring excision, Wesley calmly 
reviews that great outpouring of the sanctify- 
ing Spirit, and adopts the prayer of a devout 
Scotchman : " O Lord ! if it please thee work 
the same work again without the blemishes. 
But if this cannot be, though it be with all 
the blemishes, work the same work." 

Let me exhort you, in the words of Wesley, 
so full of practical wisdom, 

« TO BEWARE OF SCHISM, 

of making a rent in the Church of Christ. 
Beware of a dividing spirit ; shun whatever has 
the least aspect that way. Suffer no thought 
of separating from your brethren, whether 
their opinions agree with yours or not. Do 
not dream that any man sins in not believ- 



412 Love Enthroned. 

ing you, in not taking your word ; or that 
this or that opinion is essential to the work. 
Beware of impatience of contradiction. Do 
not condemn or think hardly of those who 
cannot see as you see, or judge it their duty 
to contradict you whether in a great thing or 
a small. O beware of touchiness and testi- 
ness ! Expect contradiction and opposition, 
together with crosses of various kinds. Con- 
sider the words of St. Paul, ' For unto you it 
is given in the behalf of Christ ' — for his sake 
as the fruit of his death and intercession for 
you — 'not only to believe on him, but also 
to suffer for his sake/ Phil, i, 29. // is given! 
God gives you this opposition or reproach ; it 
is a fresh token of his love. 

" Be particularly careful in speaking of your- 
self ; you may not, indeed, deny the work of 
God, but speak of it, when you are called 
thereto, in the most inoffensive manner possi- 
ble. Avoid all magnificent, pompous words; 
indeed, you need give it no general name , 
neither sanctification, perfection, the second 
blessing, nor the having attained. Rather 
speak of the particulars which God has 
wrought for you. You may say, ' At such a 



Address to Professors. 413 

time I felt a change which I am not able to 
express ; and since that time I have not felt 
pride, or anger, or unbelief, nor any thing but 
a fullness of love to God ! ' And if any of you 
should at any time fall from what you now 
are, if you should again feel pride or unbelief, 
or any temper from which you are now de- 
livered, do not deny, do not hide, do not dis- 
guise it at all, at the peril of your soul. At 
all events go to one in whom you can confide, 
and speak just what you feel." 

Finally, if you must neglect any means of 
grace, be sure that it is not the ordinary meet- 
ings of the Church, the preached word, the 
class, the prayer-meeting, and the Sunday- 
school. Separate meetings for the promotion 
of holiness, under proper supervision, have 
been useful, but without such supervision they 
have been detrimental. By exclusive associa- 
tion with one another there is engendered the 
feeling that they monopolize all the piety of 
the Church, and they insensibly begin to with- 
draw sympathy from those of weaker faith, 
who, most of all, need the association and aid 
of those who are stronger. Nevertheless, where 
there is great opposition to the preaching of 



414 Love Enthroned. 

full salvation in the ordinary means of grace 
it may be expedient, for the sake of peace, to 
appoint a special meeting. 

The purpose of this advice is to avoid every 
divisive tendency, every entering wedge of 
schism in the body of Christ. We believe there 
are few evangelical Churches where a modest, 
guarded declaration of the wonderful work of 
God in higher Christian experience, with ex- 
hortations drawing, not driving, justified souls 
toward the same sunny heights, would not be 
received with gladness. There is an intense 
hunger for the fullness of the Spirit in all the 
Churches, as is evinced by the widespread 
popularity of the hymn, 

" Nearer, my God, to thee." 

Another reason for our advice is, that no 
truth in the Gospel scheme was designed to 
be isolated from its connection with the whole 
system, and magnified out of due proportion 
by being exclusively dwelt upon. Such treat- 
ment of a most vital truth creates error. Jus- 
tif cation by faith, preached alone, without the 
safeguard set up by St. James, runs into the 
rankest Antinomianism. But justification by 



Address to Professors. 415 

works exclusively preached begets Pharisaism. 
The sovereignty of God may be magnified 
into the iron scheme of fatalism ; the merit of 
Christ's suffering and death may be preached 
to the total neglect of the regenerating and 
sanctifying offices of the Holy Spirit, and 
result in Universalism. So there may be so 
long and so absorbing a contemplation of 
the doctrine of Christian perfection as to lose 
sight of the duty of calling sinners to repent- 
ance. We may linger with Jesus so long on 
the mount as to forget that, at its foot, is a 
world lying in the "wicked one," greatly need- 
ing our added faith to expel the devil from his 
usurped possession. Hence, while the whole 
Gospel is preached, the wise workman will be 
careful rightly to divide the word of truth. 

Yet there is in every living Church a felt 
necessity for a meeting, under competent su- 
pervision, for the promotion of advanced Chris- 
tian experience. Wesley, with an admirable 
sagacity, met this need by his " select socie- 
ties" and " bands." * Where there is no pro- 

* At the age of eighty-five he writes thus to a circuit preach- 
er : — - No circuit ever did, or ever will flourish, unless there 
are bands in the large societies." At first the united societies 



4x6 Love Enthroned. 

vision for this want, hungry souls may fall 

into the hands of ill-balanced and unskillful 
teachers of these deep mysteries. 

The universal disuse of these in America, 
and their removal from the Discipline of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church in 1856, is the 
natural consequence of the general decline of 
preaching evangelical perfection as a distinct 
work of the Spirit. We earnestly hope that 
some substitute for the " select society" will 
be devised by the next General Conference, 
and that it will incorporate into its itinerancy 
evangelists, who, like Paul and Wesley, shall 
go flaming through the Church, calling sinners 
to Christ, and believers to the fullness of the 
Spirit. 

embraced the awakened, the bands, the justified: and the 
select societies the entirely sanctified. At the date of Wesley's 
letter the select societies seem to have been merged in the 
bands, which aimed at the edification of those whom Fletcher 
styles " adult believers." 



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